Austin News

High rents and mortgages look set to continue for Austin residents thanks to the city’s ongoing economic growth.

Austin’s growth spurt has been in part driven by a high demand for real estate. Luis Torres, an economist at Texas A&M University’s Real Estate Center, told KUT 90.5 recently that expects to see an increase in new housing permit applications and buyers for single-family homes this year.

Housing is in demand across the state, the Real Estate Center found in its December report, “Texas Quarterly Apartment Report: 3rd Quarter 2019.” The Center, posting to its Twitter account, said, “The majority of Texas areas showed both positive occupancy rate and rent growth in 3Q2019.”

But while Texas’s economy is slowing down, Austin’s real estate boom, low unemployment and the tech industry are set to spur continued growth in 2020, said Torres.

A hunger for housing means that some residents in Austin will find that keeping a roof over their heads is less affordable.

Homeowners in Austin are already handing over a large chunk of their wages for their mortgages. They pay 52 percent of their average wages toward mortgages in Hays County, 41 percent in Williamson County, and 45 percent in Travis County, according to real estate database provider ATTOM Data Solutions. These figures overshoot the cautious rate of 28 percent it recommends spending.

Renters are also stuck paying increasing sums. Austin in 2019 saw the sixth-highest year-on-year increase in rental rates, according to the apartment finder website, ApartmentList.com. And last year was no anomaly: Zillow found Austin had seen the largest rental rate increase nationwide over the last decade.

Several proposals aim to fix the issue of costly rents by easing renters into homes of their own. Local officials have tabled plans for low-interest rates on mortgages, more housing permits this year, and zoning changes in the city.