Austin Market Facing Pandemic Correction
So where are we now? What goes up must come down? We were among the leaders of home appreciation during the pandemic era, and now we’re one of the areas with the biggest correction happening. As a smaller city, smaller changes in migration and investor participation make a bigger difference in our market. Recall that the most central metric, in my opinion, is the “months of inventory” statistic. This is basically just a measure of the ratio of buyers to sellers. If you bring in, say, 50k new people to a smaller place like Austin, that affects this ratio greatly. If you do that in a place like Houston, the ratio is not as dramatically affected. Investors often lead the way in enthusiasm, and few cities had more investor enthusiasm than Silicon Valley #2 (Austin). Once they backed off, many followed their lead. All that said, I’m still bullish on Austin. The IT industry is here to stay as a leader above all others. We have continual real job growth which paves the way for future population and economic growth. Once the Fed takes their foot off our neck and helps us out with better interest rates, I expect Austin to be roaring once more…
Read more about the pandemic correction in Austin here.