Posted on 03/01/2025 1:34:25 PM PST by grundle
By Daniel Alman (aka Dan from Squirrel Hill)
March 1, 2025
This is one of the best pieces of news that I’ve read in a long, long time.
The New York Post just reported:
https://nypost.com/2025/02/27/real-estate/austin-is-seeing-the-biggest-decline-in-rents-in-the-us/
This COVID boomtown is seeing the biggest decline in rents in the country
By Emily Davis
February 27, 2025
A building boom in Austin, Texas has paid off big for renters.
There, residents’ rents have tumbled 22% from their peak in the summer of 2023, Bloomberg reported. The formerly low-cost city took on a new reputation in 2021 as a prohibitively pricey locale, as companies and young workers flocked to the Lone Star State’s capital. Heavy investment in development and ambitious housing policies, however, have flipped the script between renters and landlords.
It was the year of runaway growth, as tech companies like Tesla and Oracle relocated to the city and workers followed. Rents jumped 25% and the rental occupancy rate reached 91.7%, Bloomberg reported. The city was at risk of losing its low-cost-of-living reputation.
The housing shortage and cost-of-living crisis dominated the city’s political races in recent years, Bloomberg added. The name of the game became supply.
Developers poured into the city and new policies were enacted to encourage greater housing density. City leaders scaled back height rules, ended parking mandates and shortened the permitting process.
It worked. Almost 50,000 rental units were completed in the city in 2023 and 2024 — a 14% increase in supply.
Austin’s median rent was $1,399 in January, according to Redfin. That’s a 16% year-over-year decrease, marking the largest decline out of 44 major metropolitan areas.
From their peak in August 2023, median asking rents in Austin declined a total of 22%, or $400.
This is the exact opposite of what San Francisco has been doing.
This 15 minute video from the YouTube channel of Reason magazine, which I’ve posted on my blog quite a few times, explains exactly how San Francisco makes it illegal and impossible for developers to build enough new housing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ExgxwKnH8y4
One thing that’s interesting is that the left wing, woke, progressive activists and protestors who are interviewed in the video actually believe that building new apartments would cause rents to go up instead of down. These economically illiterate idiots don’t understand the single most basic, simple concept that is taught in every introductory level economics class.
Another one of the left wing, progressive activists’ ridiculous objections to building new apartments is that they would cast a shadow.
Hillary Ronen, one of San Francisco’s elected officials, is also opposed to building new apartments because they would cast a shadow. But the voters keep electing her again and again.
This is why the one of the most left wing, progressive cities in the U.S. has such a severe shortage of housing.
Will San Francisco decide to copy Austin’s successful policies that are very clearly explained in the New York Post article?
I very much doubt it.
I also very much hope that I am mistaken.
So the law of supply and demand works.
Hawaii should take notice.
As does limited government. Provably.
And that is supposed to be a good thing? Creating denser and denser high rise apartments with few and fewer parking spaces? No thank you.
Sounds like self-inflicted 15-minute cities.
the other thing that the left always gets wrong on this is trying to build NEW affordable housing.
New will NEVER be affordable!
The new stuff is built to temp the highest incomes into them, which move from where they are making room for someone below. This continues all the way down the food chain until you get to the bottom lowest level of rentals which then become available or cant fully rent without dropping the price.
No parking spaces, in Texas? All those cars now taking up spots on the street.
We study history of cities and say "If only they had done better, the city could have thrived longer and possibly continue thriving into the future".
The financiers and developers study a city and say, "We can make x amount of money cutting corners and screwing people before it goes too far and it becomes a losing investment. By that time, we'll have moved onto the next one."
Their history of creating slums, clear-cutting forests, polluting lakes, rivers, soil, and groundwater, etc. - It's all just a pump-and-dump scheme to them. Peasants be damned.
Yeah, it’s great.
Rainey st. Is now surrounded by 14 story buildings.
The partiers on the rooftops can drop drinks on everyone walking the party street.
Austin died when they bulldozed the Armadillo.
High density rentals = More democrats
They do in every instance except where the gov't steps in and mucks it up. Never forget: All the gov't can do in any market is redirect resources from one (often productive) use to another (often less productive) use.
When I was at UT Austin in the 1990s, new students were given a spoof parking map. Oklahoma and New Mexico were listed as “Remote Parking”
Those units should rent for much less, because they’ll be much less desirable.
“ higher density and taller apartment buildings, made it easier to get building permits, and eliminated the parking space requirements.”
Sounds like a Chinese hellhole city
The left is endorsing ending the parking requirements which sounds ominous to me.
I lived a long time on the beach where there was almost no parking for the residences and the street parking was constantly full which meant that many had to park blocks away from their apartments and during the summer beach days and events people would have to park a half mile or more away, which is a terrible way to live.
If you found a spot, you did not want to leave for an errand or shopping, or to visit someone, personally I had two parking spots on the dirt of my little shack which made me rich in parking, and made me a fair amount of money whenever I had only one vehicle and would charge a monthly rental on the other spot.
TEXAS GETS IT RIGHT AGAIN, even in left wing Austin, also known as “Berkley on the Colorado.”
They want us to live in hives with no cars.
The Armadillo was the best.
In the 70’s downtown was a great place to be.
The libs have destroyed it. I won’t go back.
Austin is a LOUSY example.
Dan’s in left field on this one.
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