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As someone who just bought a house in Austin this year, if the reason is "affordable housing", they're in for a world of hurt.
by etchalon 5y ago
As someone who just bought a house in Austin this year, if the reason is "affordable housing", they're in for a world of hurt.
- boringg 5y agoI mean are you seriously comparing affordability of Austin to the bay area? My sense is that you have only lived in Austin and thus don't know how squeezed things are in the bay area. Not trying to be rude but just trying to point out how much more affordable Austin is relative to the bay area.
- seabrookmx 5y agoNot even just the bay area but the whole coast. Look at prices in Portland, Seattle, Vancouver, or out east. They all easily top Austin. I think it's a good thing. Austin has a budding tech scene. Hopefully the political shitstorm there blows over so people actually want to live there.
- scoofy 5y ago>budding Literally Dell Computers is from Austin.
- boringg 5y agoHas Dell done anything innovative since the 90s? It repackaged computer hardware in a cheap package filled to the brim with bloatware.
- a5seo 5y agoHow many "Dellionaires" have gone on to found new startups or even become angel investors/LP's? I can only think of a couple. Overall, Dell's innovations were supply chain and direct mail, not technology.
- Apocryphon 5y agoThey're not the only company in the region: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silicon_Hills https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silicon_Hills
- boringg 5y agoIt was the example used and the list from that website its tough to tell which companies were satellite offices vs which were corporate/research HQ. Not trying to belittle Austin - I know they have a tech scene - and I know every city is trying to capitalize on marketing their city as the next silicon valley (which is such a ridiculous thing to do for an incredibly long list of reasons).
- Apocryphon 5y agoFeels like they've moved on to Miami as the next SV. Maybe that means Austin is the next Seattle.
- bradknowles 5y agoI think Apple’s campus here is already bigger than anything they’ve got anywhere else, short of the giant UFO in Cupertino, and they’re still planning on expanding. Amazon is here, and again they have a number of buildings in the Domain area. I think it might be their second or third largest site, behind HQ and possibly HQ2. Of course Dell is here. Google doesn’t have much of a presence, yet. There are lots of other companies that have massive presence here in Austin. Tesla is highly unlikely to be the biggest.
- vineyardmike 5y ago>it might be their second or third largest site, behind HQ and possibly HQ2. Amazon largeset office presence outside of seattle (and bellevue which come consider seperate) is SouthBay cali, followed then by HQ2
- bigmattystyles 5y agoThey gave us Stoner Steve; I’m surprised he’s not more of a meme actually.
- throwaway2037 5y agoDell has excellent value for money in their monitors. And has for more than 15 years. Line after line is consistently rated by a wide variety of computer reviewers as top quartile. Yes, you can argue they do not directly manufacture, but the end product is reliable and high quality.
- muzz 5y agoYeah it's been about a 30-year drought for the Austin area since Dell
- Pxtl 5y agoAlso National Instruments
- boringg 5y agoMy bad, didn't meant to leave the rest of the coastline out. And yes, hopefully these changes will turn Texas purple unless they continue to gerrymander the ish out of the whole state.
- throw0101a 5y ago> I mean are you seriously comparing affordability of Austin to the bay area? How is the sprawl in Austin compared to the Bay Area? A lot of times land/housing is cheap/er, but you 'pay' for that will long/er commutes in bad traffic. And often with few/no options for public transit.
- boringg 5y agoI feel for everyone as the prices are getting stupid everywhere.... BUTTTT I just looked on Redfin - I could buy a 3300 square foot house in Austin for under $900k with a huge pool and that was a 5 second search. No offense all you Austin folk, but you literally have no clue.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- mullingitover 5y agoI'd be careful about directly comparing prices, real estate taxes (by rate) in Texas are significantly higher than in California. They might be overall lower given that the real estate prices are cheaper, but Texas is #6 in the country for real estate taxes while California is #34[1]. [1] https://taxfoundation.org/high-state-property-taxes-2021/ https://taxfoundation.org/high-state-property-taxes-2021/
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- dexterdog 5y agoBut California makes up for it with other taxes where Texas does not.
- thebradbain 5y agoLike most things, it depends: https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2021-05-19/wait-california-has-lower-middle-class-taxes-than-texas https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2021-05-19/wait-c...
- etchalon 5y agoI've lived in Kansas City, DC, Chicago, New York, San Francisco and Austin. Is Austin cheaper than San Francisco? Yes. Would I classify Austin as "affordable"? I would have two years ago, when my wife and I were first looking to move here. That was the whole reason we began the process. But, it's gotten insane. We were going to wait a year, after renting, before we bought. Prices here were rising, we bought within six months so we wouldn't get priced out of our neighborhood. On my street, I have neighbors who bought literally a year before me, who live in basically the same home (1970s subdivision so all the houses are basically templates) that paid 40% less than we did. My neighbors could not afford to buy their current homes at the prices they're currently selling for. They cannot afford to buy similar homes in similar neighborhoods. This is only going to get worse.
- mdoms 5y agoAs someone who lives somewhere with an actual housing crisis, I just did a Zillow search for homes in Austin and I don't think you quite understand what a housing crisis looks like. Your homes look dirt cheap by Kiwi standards.
- etchalon 5y agoThey look cheap because they're underpriced. At the moment, most houses are closing 15-20% higher than list and a lot of them are offered in all cash deals. That's slowly changing, but I suspect that's temporary.
- mehrdada 5y agoBay Area homes are like that too. I implore you to check some Zillow in Mountain View and compare. Not in the same ballpark even.
- etchalon 5y agoYou're comparing Mountain View, a town of 80,000 people and 12 square miles, to ALL of Austin, with 270 square miles and nearly a million people. There are incredibly expensive parts of Austin. There are cheaper places in Austin. The areas where upper-middle class Bay Area tech workers would want to love are not in the cheaper areas.
- mehrdada 5y agoMountain View is just an example, and not an extreme one like Atherton or Palo Alto. Even if you go as far as say Pleasanton the market is still in another league compared to Austin.
- iab 5y ago"Its a house michael, how much could it cost? 2bn?"
- Robotbeat 5y agoThe average annual housing cost in Fremont is $2470/m. In Austin, it’s $1619. That’s like giving every employee a $10k/year raise (well, better as it’s after tax).
- pvarangot 5y agoI talked to several Tesla and former Tesla folks that will probably relocate because of this, and the say is that since Austin in less NIMBY than the Bay Area new housing will get built and prices will go down. It's a more complex bet than just "we move there because houses are affordable now".
- conductr 5y agoPrices will only go down in Texas when people quit moving here because they think the RE is cheap. Construction never stops here and prices still go up.
- Robotbeat 5y agoPrices would go up a lot faster without more construction.
- etchalon 5y agoI'm not sure why they think Austin is less NIMBY. That hasn't been my experience.
- ameister14 5y agoIn 2019, San Francisco housing grew in total by 4,850 units, which was an increase of 81%! over 2018. By comparison, Austin permitted 8600 multi-family units in 2018 alone. That doesn't include single family detached, which averages another 2800 a year.
- bradknowles 5y agoSan Francisco != the whole of the Bay Area. They’re right proper nutcase looney tunes in San Francisco, when it comes to new building. Almost as bad as they are here. Well, that is unless you’re building high rises on the river for the millionaires and billionaires. Then you can build as many of those as you want.
- handmodel 5y ago
- asdff 5y agoProperty taxes are higher than California, right? I can't find the source handy at the moment, but I've heard that a house in Austin that looks like a couple hundred grand cheaper than an equivalent house in California for the listing isn't actually any cheaper when you factor in the increased taxes and potentially other costs I'm not aware of.
- chris11 5y agoThat's my question. Taxes are higher and CA has prop 13, so the difference gets worse.
- thebradbain 5y agoProperty taxes are _much_ higher in Texas than California, in fact Texas has one of the highest property taxes in the nation (because there's no income tax, and TX still needs to fund itself somehow; TX also has one of the highest sales taxes for this reason, too). You pay the same on property taxes for a $400k house in Texas as a $1M house in California. Not only that, CA has Prop 13: for better or worse, your property tax is essentially frozen in the year you buy your home in CA. In TX it increases with the market value every year. And the assessors are ruthless – market value of your home went up by 20%, as they have the past few years? Expect your tax bill to too (granted, I believe legislators have restricted this to a maximum increase of 8% a year as of this session, but I believe localities are still allowed to exceed that in some cases). Source: I'm from Dallas, and a homeowner in Los Angeles. Though rates are publically available: https://smartasset.com/taxes/california-property-tax-calculator https://smartasset.com/taxes/california-property-tax-calcula... https://smartasset.com/taxes/texas-property-tax-calculator https://smartasset.com/taxes/texas-property-tax-calculator
- jdhn 5y agoIf California somehow repealed Prop 13, you would see their property tax rate zoom up to the point where Texas property taxes wouldn't seem that outrageous by comparison.
- deleted 5y ago
- ma2rten 5y agoAccording to Zillow the median house price in Austin is $596k. In Fremont, CA it's $1,4m.
- minhazm 5y agoDo you have any idea what housing costs in the bay area though? We can compare between the zipcodes of Gigafactory Texas and Fremont. According to Redfin the median sale price for 78725 (Austin) is $362k, compared to $1.225 million for 94538 (Fremont). That's more than 3x the price. Compared to California it's definitely affordable. Austin: https://www.redfin.com/zipcode/78725/housing-market https://www.redfin.com/zipcode/78725/housing-market Fremont: https://www.redfin.com/zipcode/94538/housing-market https://www.redfin.com/zipcode/94538/housing-market
- scoofy 5y agoI mean, to be fair, 78725 is effectively the middle of nowhere in Austin. It makes sense if Musk's goal was to choose a fairly undeveloped exurb, but the gigafactory is as close to Manor and Webberville as it is to central Austin. I know Fremont is suburban, but it's a well incorporated suburb to both SF, Oakland and San Jose. 78725 is on the opposite side of Austin from most of the fancy neighborhoods.
- jhatemyjob 5y agoYou're joking, right? It's 20 minutes away from downtown.
- scoofy 5y agoI mean, I haven't lived in Austin in a decade, and I know the east side neighborhoods are becoming more desireable, but my point is that it's an isolated area. You've got 71 and MLK as your only access to central Austin, so you're extremely limited in commuting. Any further development will quickly make the current Austin traffic paradigm problematic for anyone who isn't living on the east side. 130 does make pfugerville and south austin accessible though, but it's a toll road.
- jhatemyjob 5y agoI see. Still, I think that's better than living in Fremont and commuting into SF. Even with BART. I tried it a few times, that shit sucks FWIW I haven't been in Austin, just Dallas
- gonehome 5y agoIt's not even close - a crappy house on the peninsula is 1.7M, with the median closer to 2.5-3M. I mean, look at this: https://www.redfin.com/CA/Palo-Alto/3785-Park-Blvd-94306/home/1149731 https://www.redfin.com/CA/Palo-Alto/3785-Park-Blvd-94306/hom... I think Austin is better about building too, meanwhile in the Bay Area they just rejected units desperately needed in the tenderloin because they might become a "tech dorm".
- ijidak 5y ago> https://www.redfin.com/CA/Palo-Alto/3785-Park-Blvd-94306/home/1149731 https://www.redfin.com/CA/Palo-Alto/3785-Park-Blvd-94306/hom... Wow. That is unreal. Yeah, no region in almost any region of America comes close to Bay Area prices.
- rcpt 5y agoScroll to the bottom to "tax history" to see how this can be. Despite the value of the house going to the moon the previous owner was just sitting on a decade old assessment with no pressure to sell.
- Matthias247 5y agoVancouver BC might be in the same range now, where things like this show up for 2M CAD. And the conversion rate won't make up for the differences in salaries
- winkeyless 5y agoYeah, Palo Alto is extraordinarily NIMBY. A suburban area with single family houses + high paying jobs = exclusionary house prices
- kelnos 5y agoI don't think Palo Alto is a great comparison; it's a mixed new/old-money city where a lot of rich people live (with the ultra-rich next door in Menlo Park and Atherton). Compare Austin to something like Fremont, San Jose, or perhaps San Mateo. Sure, those will still be more expensive than Austin, but that $1.7M number is pretty realistic for a nice house in those other cities.
- shiftpgdn 5y agoKeep in mind that they’re in Far East Austin and you could easily commute in from any of the satellite cities with a very reasonable commute.
- baby 5y agoIt’s not just about housing price, it’s also about location. In the bay there are almost no buildings so you don’t have much choice and often have to commute from very far away.
- C19is20 5y agoAs a europerson: what are the crime statistics per place? Is there a heyjackass.com equivalent for the two 'areas'?
- adventured 5y agoScroll down to the section on crime data for each city (not far down the page): https://www.city-data.com/city/Austin-Texas.html https://www.city-data.com/city/Austin-Texas.html https://www.city-data.com/city/San-Francisco-California.html https://www.city-data.com/city/San-Francisco-California.html Austin typically has a far lower murder rate than SF (usually 1/2 to 1/3 the rate of SF looking over the prior decade). Austin is usually well below the US national murder rate, which is rare for a major US city. Austin has a dramatically lower robbery rate vs SF. They're similar on assaults. Austin is higher by 50% on rapes. SF is a lot higher on thefts. They're similar on burglaries.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- JPKab 5y agoI'm not trying to say that Austin isn't expensive because of course it is. I'll simply state that I would never consider working for Tesla before, but now I would be open to it. Travis County is pricey but it isn't too long of a drive to get to pretty cheap real estate.
- foxyv 5y agoThe area they are building in is the outskirts of Austin where an unimproved 1/3 acre will go for less than $100k. With current building costs, a house that would cost $2 million in California, would cost less that $400k in this area of central Texas. In addition, a large part of Texas is privately owned and counties are much more relaxed about land use. This means high land availability for new housing. This will reduce the price increases from demand increases.
- Salgat 5y agoHalf hour outside east Austin is super cheap, no idea what you're talking about. No one is in "for a world of hurt" unless they insist on living close to downtown.