🤠🏡 Selling Austin #29

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Pay attention to increasing affordability in the most popular Austin neighborhoods 👀 

WHAT'S INSIDE

• 🤠 WHAT’S HAPPENING AROUND TOWN

• 🔢 THE DATA

• ⁉️ WHAT THIS MEANS FOR YOU

• 🤤 HOUSE WORTH DROOLING OVER

🤠 WHAT’S HAPPENING AROUND TOWN

Buckle up y’all. This is important.

Austin’s HOME initiative is entering its second phase.

If you’re not aggressively following local politics - let me cue you in:

HOME stands for: Housing Options for Middle-income Empowerment. The goal is to increase housing density and affordability.

The thought is - if you can put 3 homes on a single lot vs. 1 home - you can build more homes. Reasonable enough.

Theoretically each of these 3 homes will be cheaper than the single home and will lead to housing affordability in Austin.

Does this mean I’ll be able to buy in Zilker/Bouldin/Travis Heights?

The most popular Austin neighborhoods have seen a dramatic increase in A/B/C units. These “tall/skinny” units still have $1M+ price tags. Time will tell if the cost savings of smaller lot sizes will actually be passed on the buyer.

Critics say there is no evidence that these smaller lots will actually yield cheaper homes.

Proponents say this is the only way to increase affordability and land saving from the smaller lots will be passed onto buyers.

Check out this A/B unit in East Austin. Both units started above $1M and slow price cuts have brought them to the mid-800’s.

🔢 THE DATA

Let’s get into the math of the HOME initiative. Not scary - promise!

• Median home price in Austin last year: $540,000

• The price of land makes up 15-20% of that cost = ~$80,000-$110,000

• Let’s say you build that same house on a smaller lot (1,800 vs 5,750 sqft) - you can sell the house for: $477,300

  • Saving: $62,700 - theoretically 

TLDR:

• Building on a smaller lot should mean that land savings are passed onto the buyer

• To be seen - will this initiative decrease median home price in popular Austin neighborhoods? The current median home price in Bouldin is $925,000.

⁉️ WHAT THIS MEANS FOR YOU

If you’re a buyer/seller/investor/renter or just interested in real estate - this weekly newsletter will help guide your decision making and help you better understand the market.

🤤 HOUSE WORTH DROOLING OVER

We’ve talked about this listing before - a Tuscan inspired home tucked into the Austin Hills.

The news is - this $10M listing just went under contract and is one of the largest deals to come across the Austin Listing Database.

At $1,181 per square foot - this is meteoric price indicates that luxury in Austin is here to stay.

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