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Putting a Face on Real Estate since 1995™
• ABoR TREPAC Movie Night • Mega Agent Secrets with Don Hobbs and Mark Hairston • Deerbrooke Grand Opening • JB Goodwin REALTORS Co. Picnic • & Much, Much More!
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JULY 2018 • VOLUME 23 • ISSUE 3
MARK
HAIRSTON
Are housing affordability problems here to stay? O By Ricki Markowitz
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ne of the most consistent refrains used over the past decade or so to describe the real estate climate in Austin is “robust.” Headlines in 2018 alone praised the market for “shattering records,” declaring it “the hottest housing market ever,” and the city is “on pace for another record year.” On the flipside of these
headlines, however, there’s a darker story. For at least five years, housing affordability in Austin has gone from bad to downright grim. So much so, think tanks have coined a term for when certain economic classes are priced out of cities and flee to the suburbs. It’s known as the suburbanization of poverty, and it’s a big jump from 1950s urban sprawl when the middle class fled to suburbs seeking serene surroundings and room to roam. Less then a century later, U.S. suburbs are home to more poor people than cities. In 2016, the Statesman reported that in census tracts surrounding Austin, the concentration of poor residents living in high-poverty has increased faster than neighborhoods in the country’s top 100 metro areas. Out of 41 suburban neighborhoods surrounding Austin, 18 had poverty levels between 20 and 40 percent, and nearly all posted increased poverty levels since 2000. Also in the Austin metro, between 2000 and 2015, the high-poverty population growth in high-density suburban neighborhoods nearly doubled, according to research from Harvard. City leaders, including Mayor Steve Adler, have compared Austin’s future to metros that are ground zero when it comes to the housing affordability crisis—places like Los Angeles,
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Seattle and San Francisco, “A wonderful, incredibly expensive city with a median home price over $1 million, where only the wealthy and the subsidized can afford to live.” Updating and passing a new development code is a great way to address housing issues here in Central Texas, but experts say Austin may already resemble those west coast cities more than we’re ready to admit. How so? Cedar Park, Pflugerville and Georgetown, plus other close neighbors, are also in a sprint to provide economically diverse housing options to accommodate their own population growth, many of whom will come from Austin. So if Austin has been experiencing explosive growth, businesses are happily relocating here, it’s a top 10 location for startups, and
even more people are choosing to buy homes in surrounding suburbs just to be close to Austin, what’s the problem? We only need to look at other urban-sprawl stories to see where this leads. Cities riding Austin’s coattails today will be experiencing their own housing affordability crisis down the road, if they’re not already dealing with it. As we speak, city leaders, as well as concerned citizens, are placing much of the blame for our housing problems on the land development code that hasn’t been updated in four decades. Austin’s City Council is reviewing the final draft now and those responsible for updating and approving CodeNext are hop-
Front Page: Continued on page 28
Features of the Month Column: ABoR—Change is coming!. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .pg. 3 Column: WCREALTORS—Housing Affordability: An issue going forward?. . . . . . . . . . .pg. 7 Column: HBA—2018 Parade of Homes at Travisso is coming this Fall. . . . . . . . . . . . pg. 15 Column: Women's Council—Is there such a thing as an affordable house in Central TX?. pg. 20 Expert Commentary: Value-Adds...Are they worth it?. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . pg. 22 Associates in Progress: Toll Brothers. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . pg. 25 Associates in Progress: Santa Rita Ranch. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . pg. 27 Column: RRC—Times have changed and so have housing prices!. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . pg. 30 Upcoming Events. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . pg. 33