Is Austin America's Boomtown?

Although it may seem like Austin is THE boomtown, it’s actually something that’s going around all over Texas. It’s true, we do dominate in the regional IT industry, and create more white collar high-paying jobs than our Texas rivals, but in aggregate the DFW area definitely gets more total migration. As a magnet, it also doesn’t hurt that they were bigger from the outset, so pre-established industries and a diversified economy just draws more from every direction as natural relationships bring in those they are already connected to. Dallas had a much earlier start as well. Most of Austin’s growth has only happened over the last few decades.

Dallas and Houston’s larger size is something that makes them less susceptible to wilder swings of appreciation as well. If you bring in 50,000 people to a HUGE metropolitan area like DFW or Houston, it’s no big deal. The market can absorb it. The balance between the ratio of buyers and sellers is not severely disrupted. Austin, on the other hand, by comparison, is a small town. 50k of job creation and new migration instead DOES make a disruption in the ratio of buyers to sellers. That’s why we were among the top appreciating cities during the pandemic era. Investors also noticed this, and jumped in. At our height, investors were over a third of all buyers. When they slowed down and migration did as well, it again threw our ratios out of balance, and thus higher depreciation than the rest of the nation. We’re set up for wilder swings until we have a much bigger total population.

Read more about how DFW has become America’s boomtown here.