3 ms·

It's certainly an entirely different cost universe at present. A quick price scan through realtor.com for Austin TX listings, shows that you can buy housing in

It's certainly an entirely different cost universe at present. A quick price scan through realtor.com for Austin TX listings, shows that you can buy housing in Austin for $500k-$700k that would cost more like $3m-$5m in SF. Given the nature of real-estate in Texas in general, and the way that Austin has an enormous amount of room to free-sprawl (ala other TX cities), I'm very skeptical Austin can ever end up with a comparable housing situation to SF or Seattle. As a plus, in the next 20 years Austin will be connected via high-speed rail to Dallas, San Antonio and Houston (HSR triangle). You can still do infrastructure in Texas cost-effectively.

rossdavidh 8y ago
I bought my house for 130k 15 years ago. It is probably worth about double that now. People who can afford a 100k house used to be able to get a home in Austin, even 10 years ago, and in a few pockets of the city even 5 years ago. What SF considers affordable, is way overpriced.
- dkarl 8y ago
  Double? I would guess triple or quadruple.
jiveturkey 8y ago
> A quick price scan through realtor.com for Austin TX listings, shows that you can buy housing in Austin for $500k-$700k that would cost more like $3m-$5m in SF. That's worthless info without also understanding operating cost (taxes) and earning power. According to https://smartasset.com/taxes/texas-property-tax-calculator https://smartasset.com/taxes/texas-property-tax-calculator it's roughly 2% in travis county, vs 1% in CA. Earning power appears to be about half in Austin compared to SFBA. So you can afford 1/4 the house, in terms of dollars. $3mm -> $750k. To the extent that your operating cost includes mortgage service, the Austin number would go up. Let's just call it 2x, so $1.5mm. Not bad. WAIT! We are neglecting income tax. 0% vs 13.1%. But because TX doesn't have the stupid prop 13, let's just call this a wash. per TFA: "The median home price in Austin jumped 40 percent over the last five years".

rossdavidh 8y ago

I bought my house for 130k 15 years ago. It is probably worth about double that now. People who can afford a 100k house used to be able to get a home in Austin, even 10 years ago, and in a few pockets of the city even 5 years ago. What SF considers affordable, is way overpriced.

dkarl 8y ago
Double? I would guess triple or quadruple.

jiveturkey 8y ago

> A quick price scan through realtor.com for Austin TX listings, shows that you can buy housing in Austin for $500k-$700k that would cost more like $3m-$5m in SF. That's worthless info without also understanding operating cost (taxes) and earning power. According to https://smartasset.com/taxes/texas-property-tax-calculator https://smartasset.com/taxes/texas-property-tax-calculator it's roughly 2% in travis county, vs 1% in CA. Earning power appears to be about half in Austin compared to SFBA. So you can afford 1/4 the house, in terms of dollars. $3mm -> $750k. To the extent that your operating cost includes mortgage service, the Austin number would go up. Let's just call it 2x, so $1.5mm. Not bad. WAIT! We are neglecting income tax. 0% vs 13.1%. But because TX doesn't have the stupid prop 13, let's just call this a wash. per TFA: "The median home price in Austin jumped 40 percent over the last five years".