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  • Posts Tagged ‘Austin’

    Is the Austin Real Estate Market Getting Better?

    Tuesday, April 19th, 2011

    Austin Real Estate tumbled and touched the bottom-most point like any other real estate market of the United States. Property price was going down, and in the last two years this continuous drop in price caused many Austin realtors to panic. Many Austin homes were up for sale, but no buyers were looking at it, and home owners lost their hope. Hence, “Austin Homes for sale” placard was gathering dust, as no one cared about it anymore.

    Then came February, and it brought the good news. Congress approved American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 sanctioned ,000 tax credit to the first-time home buyers. Thanks to this legislation, the buying sentiment returned to the market.

    Since then, the Austin real estate market has recovered a great deal. And the news that Austin will be among two cities to recover earliest from recession is adding up to the positive market sentiment in Austin.

    Real estate studies

    According to a new nation forecast by IHS Global Insight, Austin and its Texan cousin San Antonio will be the two cities that will be quickest in beating the economic recession.

    According to the study conducted by the Brookings Institute, Austin is among the Top 20 best performing metropolitan area in the second quarter of 2009, as said the report published in Austin Business Journal.

    In the second quarter, Austin has also been found leading the pack on many of the 9 metrics tracked by MetroMonitor for100 U.S. cities. These metrics included things like metropolitan products, and percentage change in housing price, etc.

    There are many reports that coming that shares the same sentiment, which compelled me that I should find some data to match the prediction. Hence, I am going to provide here some hard data as evidence to corroborate with these and several other studies.

    Austin Real Estate marketing data The Austin home sale in July 2009 has torched the mark set in July 2008, as reported by Austin Board of REALTORS. In July ’09, 2,069 homes were sold, where as in July ’08, 2,068 homes were sold. The median home price was also just 2% at 1,500 below the median home price in the same month last year. This data might not have looked positive in the bullish market, but given the state of Austin real estate in this year, this can be seen as a good recuperation. 8,810,549 was the total value of single-family properties sold in July 2009. In August 09, total house sold: 1706; average listing: 5,966; median listing: 5,750; average sold: 6,372; median sold: 0,000. In September 09, total house sold: 1639, 0.61% rise since September 08 (1629); average listing: 7,361, 0.69% rise since September 08 (5,585); median listing: 4,900, 2.63% rise since September 08 (9,900); average sold: 6,185, 0.04% rise since September 08 (6,079); median sold: 8,500, 1.89% raise since September 08 (5,000). Most of the U.S. cities are still struggling, but 17% of total homes that had “Austin Home for Sale” placard have found the buyers. To put it plainly, Austin has seen a 17% decline in home inventory, and witnessed increase in sale. The Brookings Institute’s study found out that the Austin house price is up by 2.4% over the past year while the US house price is down by 6.3% over the same period. Conclusion

    As it is evident from the data given above that the predictions and forecasting made by national as well as Austin realtors are proving to be true. The Austin real estate market is heating up as the market sentiment is back into the buying mode. The confidence in the home owners are back, and now, no “Austin Home for Sale” placard is gathering dust.

    Profiles in Green Building: the Austin Real Estate Market

    Sunday, February 20th, 2011

    Austin has long been a home for friendly folk- friendly to each other, friendly to animals, and friendly to the environment. What used to be considered as only the concerns of hippies and the bohemian sect, environmentalism is now at the forefront of commercial and residential design, and “green” businesses are popping up nationwide. Austin, however, was the first city in the United States to establish a local green-building program, laying out environmentally friendly and sustainable guidelines for home builders and its interested citizens back in 1991.

    Since the Austin real estate market is known nationwide as the leader of these green building methods, the National Association of Home Builders chose the city as its hub to launch an industry-wide effort to establish green-building guidelines in 2004. These guidelines now provide a practical nationally recognized framework for builders to follow to reduce a home’s environmental impact by making them more energy efficient, improving indoor environmental quality, and so on. Though Austin has already been using similar guidelines for over a decade, now the rest of the country is following suit.

    The City of Austin and Austin Energy provide a great resource to owners of Austin homes, and new home builders, who are looking for ways to conserve energy, and build an environmentally friendly home. The city’s website offers a list of companies willing to do an energy analysis of a home that will determine possible options to help the house conserve more energy, with suggestions ranging from air conditioning repair to weather stripping doors. The city then will offer a 20 to 75% of that cost.

    For those Austinites building a new house or commercial building, the city created the Austin Energy Green Building organization to promote the construction of high quality, more sustainable buildings, and has even zoned sections of the city’s real estate to require an Austin Energy Green Building rating. Four times a year, the organization also holds a one day “Green By Design” workshop open to the public. The workshop provides an overview of the green building process, and brings in design, building, engineering, landscaping, and Austin real estate professionals with many years of experience in homebuilding and remodeling, to help make sense of it all.

    In March of this year, Austin was named as the city leading the country in “cleantech” by SustainLane, an online resource center that offers sustainability tips to state and local government. The term “cleantech” refers to venture capital-based startups based in green technology, with Austin as the front runner with seven such startups, ranging from internet-controlled irrigation to geothermal energy technologies. To keep Austin on the cutting edge of green technology, the Clean Energy Incubator program was set up to help young clean energy businesses succeed by commercializing their ideas. With citizens, government, and forward thinking businesses, Austin will likely be the city to follow in the environmental battle for years to come.

    Tips for Buying Austin Real Estate

    Wednesday, February 16th, 2011

    Austin is the city of Texas City, and is also one of the preferred places to people in. Interestingly, it has also got umteen top group who reside in this country. Due to these factors, the Austin true realty has been catching up a big quantify among the realtors. In the gathering 2009, the austin real estate actual acres has climbed to the status of company iii for the ‘Best Locate to Live’, from the orientation of determine six. It also has other believability termed as the greenest port in America, situated as the 5th unhazardous metropolis, and is also the littlest disagreeable municipality. Here in this article, you can find the tips for buying a realistic acres possession in Austin.

    Firstly, you have to keenly research roughly the neighbourhood. Though this is a familiar tip that anyone can tender, it is a thing to do so. You can equal go there and spend some term with the people around, and then decide whether the neighborhood would be o.k. for you. You can also blemish upon the availability of schools, tract, mart stores, hospitals and doctors, can department, gym, constabulary, sports association, and departmental keep. You can alter invoice on the evildoing grade of the port, as device is the front target to be reasoned, especially when you are waving that you should conceive an austin real estate concrete estate official, which is as burning as object the good neighbourhood. As an medicament, he/she instrument not get a gracious domiciliate but would also ply you the uncomparable accomplishable toll for you. At a separate separate, they gift also helpfulness you in subsiding in the dominion. It is sometimes said that, the Austin concrete estate agents someone sometime embellish the lifelong friends for their customers.

    Thirdly, in Austin true acres, it is key that you do not bench for the archetypical e’er shown accommodation to you at a intelligent happening. Sensing at a minimum of cardinal to quintuplet houses before decisive on the shelter. As a important tip, stop the pictures of the domiciliate you are impermanent and ask for the benefits of every home.

    Fourthly, it is important that you pay rightly to the Austin true estate bourgeois as bargaining with them for the certification is a bad purpose.  A halcyon realistic demesne factor gift service you attaining the individual asylum and aggregation time the grumpy factual land medication would not service you so.

    Finally, it is essential to undertake a place investigator piece choosing the Austin existent estate.

    Austin Texas Apartment Prices Drop for Fall!!

    Thursday, November 4th, 2010

    Summer is finally over and Apartment communities that maintained 90-100% occupancy levels throughout the summer have now been bombarded with new fall and winter time notices to vacate. Apartment communities pre-lease apartments based on their notices to vacate which are usually given 60-90 days out from the resident’s move date or lease end date.

    Most long term tenants are being pushed out of their apartments with rental increases up to 0. Many of my clients recently call me discouraged stating that they have been a perfect resident for 5 years or more and dont understand why their aparmtent community is so anxious to “stick it to them” when it comes time to renew their leases.

    The first question I ask them is how much they are paying currentlly ie; a client we’ll call Leslie that I am helping move currently. Leslie told me that she is paying 5 for a 740sf apartment in a community she has lived at for 5 years and is only 7 years old, and they want to raise her rent to 5. The first thing I told her was that the community wanted to raise her rent 0 due to the fact that since she leased there 5 yrs ago the market had completely changed. Unfortunately the only people that view long term occupants at an apartment community as an asset are the occupants themselves.

    The truth of the matter is that Leslie and many others around Austin whom of which have been exemplary tenants are being viewed as a loss to their apartment communities. With a shortage of available apartments in Austin the market has changed. For example 5 years ago in South Austin you could get a nice apartmnet at an A class property for between 6-0. Now you cant even get near an A class property in South Austin for less than 0 and that would be for a 1 bedroom apartment. Availability pushes pricing. If a guy has 50 apartments available they lower prices and offer up a massive upfront concession ie; 1 month free 2 months free etc. But when a management company looks down and sees that they are 96% full which has been the case most of this summer and historically most summers then their rates rise to the market rates (the highest rates they can charge for a particular unit). Long term residents are being viewed as a loss and therefore pushed out.

    The good news is that in the last two or three months there have been at least twenty new apartment communities open.  There are also at least 100 more on the horizon. This type of news and the historically slow fall and winter months are forcing apartment communities to drop their prices and drop them fast. There are at least twenty communities that I can think of right now that have dropped their prices – in the last month from August pricing to compete with the new properties that have opened or are opening up in their vicinity.

    For example the Wyndhaven apartments on Wells Branch. For years wyndhaven was only one of two A property options in the Wells Branch area. Their smallest 1 bdrm apartment 630sf was going for 9 a month. Then comes the Verde Oak Park apartments that opened a month or two ago right next door. The day Verde Oak Park opened their doors Wyndhaven went to 9 on the same floor plan. It still didnt help them though Verde Oak Park has a similar square footage for 0 Brand New Never Been Lived In! Then they were offering two months free upfront. Well if you average out the two months free over the lease term which was 13 months (aka a prorate) 20 is the total concession or (special) divided by the minimum lease term which was 13 months thats 20 divided by 13 months equaling 9.23. The 9.23 is your average monthly concession. You then subtract the 9.23 from the monthly rental rate. 0 minus 9.23 equals 0.77 a month for 13 months. Plus these apartments contain granite countertops, washer and Dryer etc and are BRAND NEW and have NEVER BEEN LIVED in.

    So, yes rental rates are dropping dramatically with the rise of new communities you just can’t be fooled by upfront numbers anymore. My advice is that you always contact a Real Estate professional procurement of leasing transactions for the consumer are always 100% FREE. And recommended. Yes rates are higher but if you look past the first picture of the rate being 0 when you’re pricerange is 0 and you end up at Wyndhaven which is over ten years old and a much lesser quality class A property at 9 then the only one to blame is yourself. With the newer communities trying to fill up their properties they are offering great upfront concessions that will bring the rates back down.

    You should always contact an apartment locator before looking at apartments on your own. If that apartment locator dosent find you the best deal available and you are not happy enough to move in then they dont get paid that is your insurance. Austin Apartment Guy would be glad to either help you find an apartment or counsel you on the leasing process. You can contact us through our website http://www.austinapartmentguy.com .