Hi y’all, welcome back to Selling Austin - your weekly local real estate recap.
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WHAT'S INSIDE

• 🔢 THE DATA

• 🤠 WHAT’S HAPPENING AROUND TOWN

• ⁉️ WHAT THIS MEANS FOR YOU

• 🤤 HOUSE WORTH DROOLING OVER

🔢 THE DATA

I’m an ex-dentist turned Realtor - let’s work together! Email me, tweet me or send me a carrier pigeon. 🐦️ 

Austin just claimed the #1 wealthiest ZIP code in all of Texas

The Austin American-Statesman crunched the latest IRS data (2022 tax year, filed 2023) and the results are insane. 78746 - West Lake Hills, Rollingwood, Lost Creek - reported an average income of $993,796.

Context: the Texas statewide average is $93,997. So this ZIP earns roughly 10xwhat the average Texan earns.

Even crazier - 3 of the top 10 wealthiest ZIPs in Texas are in Austin.

SSource: IRS SOI Tax Stats · Table via Austin American-Statesman

What's actually going on with these numbers?

• Average ≠ median. The IRS reports averages, which get pulled way up by a handful of mega-earners. The median household income in 78746 is closer to $191,000

  • Translation: a small group of nine- and ten-figure earners are doing a lot of the lifting in the 78746 number (Hi Elon?)

• 47.1% of 78746 households make $200K+ - vs. the Statesman's prior reporting that a family of four in Austin needs ~$200K to "live comfortably"

• Austin punches way above its weight. DFW has ~2.5x our population. Houston has more. Yet downtown 78701 (~7,400 returns) still cracks the state's top 10.

  • Density of wealth > raw population

What does this mean for housing in 78746?

• Median home value in the ZIP: ~$1.69M

• Waterfront on Lake Austin: $4M – $50M+

• Inventory moves on a totally different clock - Westlake currently has just 37 active homes for sale with a $2.65M median price

🤠 WHAT’S HAPPENING AROUND TOWN

If you've never heard of Aman, here's the 10-second version: it's the ultra-luxury hotel brand that celebrities, CEOs, and royalty fly across the world for. Rooms at Amangiri in Utah run $3,500–$8,000 a night. There are only ~35 Aman properties on Earth.

And one of them is coming 90 minutes from Austin. 🐎

The new project is called Amansanu (Sanskrit for "peaceful peak")

Here's what we know so far:

• Pavilion-style hotel suites

• Branded private residences on hillside plots starting at 10 acres each

• Aman's first fully-serviced stables + horse-riding trails 🐎

• Aman Spa + Wellness Center, multiple restaurants, racquet sports courts, hiking trails

• This will be Aman's 6th U.S. property - joining Amangiri (Utah), Amangani (Wyoming), Aman New York, and the upcoming Aman Miami Beach + Aman Beverly Hills
  

  

   

  What will the residences cost?

  No pricing has been announced yet, but we can estimate:

  • Aman New York units have traded between $28M and $34M, with the penthouse reportedly under contract at $180M

  • Aman Miami Beach residences pre-sold at roughly $5,000 per square foot

  No opening date yet either - Aman typically takes years between announcement and ribbon-cutting. But it's officially happening.

⁉️ WHAT THIS MEANS FOR YOU

If you're a buyer/seller/investor/renter or just interested in real estate - this section breaks down what this week's data means for you.

The big backdrop: the Austin metro is now firmly in a buyer's market. 🔄

• 16,426 active listings as of May 14 (multi-year high)

• Median sold price: $460K - down 16.4% from the May 2022 peak

• 50.1% of active listings have already taken a price drop

• Average days on market: 77 days

• Sold-to-list ratio: 97.91% (so the average deal is closing ~3% under asking)

• Austin has 115% more sellers than buyers - the 2nd-widest gap of any major U.S. metro

🤤 HOUSE WORTH DROOLING OVER

Welcome to The Legacy of Lake Austin - a nearly 6-acre Lake Austin waterfront compound that just hit the market via Sotheby's International Realty. Directly next door to Michael Dell's ranch.

Yours for: $50,000,000

View the listing →

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