Unaffordability in Austin: Income not keeping up with cost of housing | KVUE 

My bro came to Austin in mid 2020 and decided to buy a house 4b, 2baths, 2200sft for $380k.. now his house worth $700k . Unbelievable

So glad I decided to leave that place. I grew up in Austin and was pretty much forced to leave due to cost of living

60 yrs old today...full time job...live in a van...Keep Austin wierd right..?

Love how they interviewed someone who isn’t even from Austin lol. She’s been here for 2 years. I’d like to see the focus be on people who grew up here, whose family has had to leave because of all this “progress”. I grew up here and it’s nearly impossible to even save up to move away from my hometown. Well off people will always say “boohoo, get a better job, go to school, it’s progress or get over it”. It’s easy to say when you come from money and privilege. I’d like for daddy to give me a head start too; but he couldn’t.

people coming in from other states with loads of money, its hard to compete if youre a local… cant even get out of my apartment with both my wife and I with full time jobs…

I lived in Austin 2009 - 2013. My Apartment near 38th and Lamar was $639 + electric. The same apartment now rents for 1,499. I'm pretty sure they are sitting on that property to eventually sell for a maximum price so it can be demolished and replaces with a high rise.

That's what happens when you bring in tech companies and big corporations. Why do you think the San Francisco Bay area is so expensive?

Same thing is happening in Montana. New minimum wage for city employees in Bozeman is $21/hr and they can't even afford a mortgage! Median home price is 900k and they would need 4.7k/month vs the 3k they are making. Absolutely ridiculous!!!

The same thing happened to Seattle during the tech boom here in the 2010s. Facebook, Google, Amazon, and tons of other tech companies offering salaries to tech workers 3-5 times more than an established blue collar Seattleite. Prices of houses and goods shot up and have displaced many who used to call Seattle home. Looks like the same has happened in Austin. Hope there's something they can about the affordability otherwise being a software engineer is one of the few options left to continue living in Austin.

I paid $375/month for my first apartment (2 bedroom apt) in Austin in 1984.

I moved to Austin in 2013. Rent wasn’t cheap but it was still affordable and now it’s become another SF or Seattle with the influx of people moving here, mostly from California. My boyfriend and I are planning to leave in a few years max. It’s not the quiet, quirky city medium sized city it once was. Now it’s just gentrified and commercialized urban sprawl.

It's not a product of "low pay". It's a product of government policies that restrict the construction of new housing units and an antiquated zoning code that focuses on single family detached housing while making it difficult to build multifamily attached housing. But when put to the voters in Austin they rejected revisions to the zoning laws.

When I moved there for college in 2010 my rent was $570/mo in the NW near Anderson Mill. When I graduated three years later my rent went up by $200. At the time I thought $800 was a lot for rent, but little did I know it would be double that today. Austin seems to have lost that Texas spirit it once had. Feels like a LA now.

Stop moving here 😭😭😭

House of cards. There is not enough water for the growth. We are also experiencing more and more droughts. Notice all the pollution in the water anf other water issues that are happening quite often now.

All the new FOMO people moving to Austin just fuels the fire

We just moved out of Austin, and thank goodness. Rent was so high for apartments that were filled with mold and often crawling with wood roaches, with investment firms for landlords who just didn't care about the health or well-being of their renters at all. We made well over $100K by the time we left and couldn't dream of affording a house there, and the just total inconvenience of living in Austin, the horrible and worsening weather, and the lack of things to do compared to other smaller cities made the prices completely unreasonable. It's so bad living in Austin that I have to wonder if the tech corporations moving there are paying Austin's way into all those "best places to live" articles to try to convince primarily Californians to move to a state that's tax-friendlier to the business. I would not be surprised if there's a mass exodus in the next few years - all I can say is that being back in Chicago has lifted many enormous weights off of my shoulders after living in Austin for four years.

It will come to the point everywhere when rich people are looking for services and find none because people can't afford to live in the area to provide them.

Got priced out of my apartment and now I’m homeless trying to rebuild my life .

I was a high producer in the Austin real estate market. Back when the 2008 recession happened, we didn't really go after the Wall Street criminals. Instead we passed Dodd-Frank. Dodd-Frank did away with most of the ways a buyer's realtor used to get first time homebuyers a loan. That means we lost the bulk of first time homebuyers for 15 years. First time homebuyer rates are at 1938 levels of participation. We didn't build the homes we needed for those buyers. That's a huge part of the lack of housing. For most people, buying a home will be the best investment they will ever make. Most first time homebuyers, I served to buy homes, were converted would be renters. Most of my clients didn't think they were going to be buying a home, they typically would call on an ad, or walk through an open house, while looking for a place to rent. Without a way to get first time homebuyers in a homes, the agents who knew how to put deals together disappeared. It is an art form to get all the things done so most first time homebuyers could buy a home. The US government spent decades building a reliable market, that worked for first time homebuyers, and the agents/builders, that supported them. If out government doesn't understand the importance of helping first time homebuyers, and fix this problem, we will see more of these problems. Buy a home when you're young, and you'll be protected when you're old. Otherwise, when you can least afford it, you'll be chasing higher rent prices and/or even be homeless.

Dark days ahead.

Income plateaued decades ago. Remember the late 70’s, early 80’s. Wages stagnated. Cost of living kept rising. Same craziness today. Cost of housing and food is not only affecting Texas but all over America 🇺🇸 Canada 🇨🇦 the world 🌎 and everyone. Texas is not alone or unique in this economy.

We’re bringing in these big tech companies but how many are actually giving Texans jobs I see a lot of these tech companies bringing there employees from other states

10 more years until retirement. I have been in Austin 55 years. The cost of living and the failed policies of the mayor and city council will force me out.

Shout-out to the people moving to Austin Texas from out of state that are paying 4 times the market value. You're making a lot of people wealthy. -Commenting for a friend.

Pay wages need to go up! What our medical professionals, teachers and law enforcement are being paid is a joke.

Times like these makes me glad that I work from home. With every lease renewal I can pretty much guarantee a rent hike. At least I can up and leave without having to go through the pain of switching jobs. I love my area, but at some point it will no longer be sustainable to live here, or in the rest of the city for that matter.

It’s crazy! I know this IT developer, that make over 100k, has to move to Hutto( an hour from central Austin) to be able to afford a house 😰

People are moving here from other states like California. Hello California people thank you for raising our prices to live. Guess what we do not get paid enough money to live here in Austin. I work for the City of Austin and they do not pay us the cost of living 😒 to live here. It's not right that people like me have to live in a different city 100 miles away round trip just to live. I was born and raised in Austin. Where i live now the rent and mortgage prices are going up and the jobs there sucks their pay wages are very low. It is really sad that rent and mortgage is so high. Fast food places can't keep workers and are closing early everyday. Something has to change 🤔. These jobs need to pay us more money to live. Gas is high grocery stores are high everything has went up in price but my check.

Student housing is just morbid. I lived with 5 roommates through college and lived in a shared room (the apartment was two shared rooms and two private) and I still payed 700 a month. Private rooms were 900, and a partial lease in a private room went for 1100. The apartment wasn't large either, and there was only a single fridge for 6 hungry college guys. Needless to say we bought another fridge.

Every year rent goes up and sustainable life needs goes up. However, finances are not in the loop! People are greedy! Homelessness is not a choice! Stop the property taxes from going up, while these properties still look the same. Put a cap on the amount a property owner may raise rent. Even the shelter has a lack of housing options and a lack of reality to assist the needed! Most Austin residents are one to a few steps away from this frustrating reality!

A couple years ago I had an expression of desire to move to Austin, i’m glad I never went since I probably would’ve been dealing with some problems like this.

So the Smith left California to look for gold in Texas, but end up with cow manure???? The grass ain't greener in Texas

Have had my house up by lake Travis for seventeen years. It was built in 1964 on two lots and get offers all the time ,I'm not selling. If I did sell they would mow it down and jam two houses here with no yard for profit. I couldn't buy another house even if I wanted to. Money from selling and my income is not sufficient to live or get something else. Apartments now are more than my mortgage. My only goal is to pay it off so I can have a roof over my head without rent when I'm to old to work. I might be able to at least scrape together enough to pay the property taxes. Just have to keep it from falling apart around me. Also not an easy task.

Wait till August with no rain.

Similar problems in Denver, but employers have raised wages all across Colorado. Texas still pays low. Example: Home Depot in Denver, starts at $21/hr. Home Depot in Houston, TX starts at $11/hr. I work in IT Support and made 50k in Texas. Working the same job in Denver, making 70k. So glad I left Texas..

Can we acknowledge a basic fact? Landlords have all the power with tenants having few basic rights and even then are not enforced. This is especially true for Austin because of the growth. A landlord can issue a "non-renewal" notice to not renew the tenants next lease and give no reason for it. Furthermore, the next rental can refuse to rent based on a non-renewal notice giving the tenant no representation. With few enforceable rights the landlord holds all the cards. How many here have had their rents skyrocket? Anyone report a basic maintenance issue like a broken appliance and it took weeks to fix? How many days have you gone without hot water while the landlord characterizes this as an "inconvenience"? Anyone had difficulties getting the owner to take care of the cockroach or rat problems? What other bills in your life will cost ten percent more for being late a day? I can be two weeks late on a car payment with no problem but two weeks late on rent leads to eviction. How many actually get their security deposit returned? Are you scared of posting a bad review for fear of reprisal? Is there such thing as tenant advocacy beyond the volunteers at The Austin Tenants Council? Any of this ringing true for you?

I hate this place.

Where did the Austin resident move here from? She really was shocked at the low pay. Californian maybe?

When I moved out of my apartment in January, when they reposted it to their website, they raised the rent by $350 dollars. It's depressing.

Take me back to 1995 😭

If you increase the wages you will see an increase everywhere else. It's basic economics. If a community has more access to more money via higher wages across the board then you will see an increase in everything else.

Yeah prices skyrocket but pay stays the same.. 😥 I don't get it 🤷🏾‍♂️

Not just Austin, Las Vegas, Phoenix, Tampa, all of the sunshine states. You have to pay for it!

It sounds weird but we should drop the affordable housing programs, they hold up new building initiatives. We need to focus on higher density housing, townhomes, A/B units on the same property, more condos. Simply more supply with the same amount of demand means lower prices.

Unaffordability isn't restricted to just Austin Tx . It's everywhere across America . And getting worse by the day .

Also remote workers are part of the equation. If I get paid California wages but can live in Texas that's a huge incentive. We currently live in Austin and would love to move to a more affordable area but the job is unwilling to go 100% remote because they don't want to lose their culture although it worked perfectly fine for 2 years.

When I visited Austin for the 4th of July, I was amazed by the amount of homelessness. Under some bridges, they even created their own tent cities… Truly a housing crisis.

Sadly nothing will be done about this. It’s all talk and no action- like always

It's not just Austin

Austin is a corpse of what it was, it's unfortunate.

All these tech people from California are the main reason that the Austin home price is going up.

I am a Austin native born and raised, I make 70k a year on my own without my wife’s income and with our current prices I feel like I’m still making 30k with a home purchase far out of sight.

maybe essential needs like housing shouldn't be entirely controlled by a commodified capitalist system. just a thought.

why not have extra tax on any investment properties other than primary housing

Shoutout to the guy who came in near the end. Said everything I was going to comment. All about zoning.

I'm glad I don't stay there anymore. But it's time toove out of Texas altogether.

My question is what will the corporations gonna do when nobody is applying for apartments due to unaffordable rent. And the trend for no applicants continue for years. Then what ?

And then they wonder why no one wants to work at Taco Bell or Walmart lol

Austin trying be like California but paying Texas minimum wage.

Austin is going to become like New York very expensive.

Put something in place so property taxes don’t go up with the appraised value of the home every year. And then add a small income tax or gas tax or something like that. A gas tax could push people more towards EV‘s well making money for the government or something. They just need to lower property tax

Or income has been running ahead and housing costs are just catching up. Looking at most other developed countries you'll see something strange...half the median income as in the US, houses cost 2x more per sq ft and homeownership is higher??? How can people in other countries can afford homes but Americans can't? Oh and then there's the reality that homes in Austin are being bought very quickly. How can any product be "unaffordable" yet sell fast. When something is unaffordable it means people can't buy it. Well, that's what affordable used to mean. Now apparently it means cheap news story a bunch of people sitting at home want to hear.

Ironic that the City of Austin demographers office is supposedly concerned about incomes not keeping up with cost of living when the City of Austin is in fact one of the biggest offenders when it comes to not increasing wages of their employees to keep up with said cost of living. Especially in that 50k to 100k segment. The top paid COA employees don't seem to have any issues getting a decent raise, the rest of us however are lucky if we get a 2% yearly increase meanwhile the the cost of living here is going up at a rate of at least 7-8% a year.

I have been in Austin since 74 (52). Wife and I bought our home new in Cedar Park back in 2003. It is a 2400 sq ft home and we paid $146k for it. The same home today, one that has been lived in sells for $495k. A new home this size sells for $650k+. A bed apt in CP rents for $1600. Sad. We need to see a housing market crash as we did in 08. Austin is a shell of what it use to be. The downtown is dirty and a homeless haven. I don't recommend anyone vacation here unless your going to Lake Way to enjoy Lake Travis. But only if the lake is full.

Trend chasing Californians. Y’all were fine in cali before all this but y’all have to be followers…

My cousin moved north out of Austin to Georgetown and his new home was in the $800,000 range. Crazy expensive.

Maine has the same bs happening. You should see the dumps with rent tags of 2K/mo

Austin is definitely catering to the upper class here and trying to push out the poor. Methamphetamine is also all over the streets. Lived here my entire life and the only thing that's changing is how much everything costs... I've worked hard, saved for an apartment when the time came, I couldn't afford it.

Really!?!? That’s so weird!?!??! I wonder why!?!?? Crazy!?!??!

I wonder why 🙄

All u newcomers gotta go

Talk about the property tax rate

This is what happens when rents go from rising 2-3% annually to 35% and rising. Foreigners and other wealthy investors come and buy up the cheap properties as an investment and raise rents. You have to put caps on how much a landlord can raise rents annually.

Tell the investors to sell their property like the corporations they won't have this problem but nobody wants to check them. The most expensive places to live has the lowest wages how is that.

Same thing happened a few times in the Bay Area. We had our rent almost double 3 times since 1984. The dot com boom in my home town in Silicon Valley pushed us East to Austin :) if you build it they will come. A real viable solution would be to move to a more affordable area. Many of we Native Californians have had to do it. Yes, we too complained about it at first, but this is a very real issue in a capitalist society. We need to be versatile and change with the times.

So about 55-60% will be struggling..

so lets see, used to be affordable now it isnt... wonder how that happened?!?!?!?

It's going to get worse

This is ALL OVER THE USA..

Yet the rest of the world keeps coming!!!

Sounds like Austin is the new Seattle not quite San Francisco levels but ridiculous.

Didn't help Californians had sold there homes for millions came here and is taking over. You can sell your home all day but can't compete with them to buy a home. Then EVERYTHING went up EVERYTHING except income. I used to love it here. The small town I live in has been overran with section 8 a pretty much crimeless town is now nothing but crime. Sad .

This is happening all over the USA

Teachers would not survive in Austin

This is what happens when you make fun of CA prices. Instead of wealthy people moving to CA, that all moved to Texas and are pricing Texas out of Texas. Hey Texans, enjoy moving to Mississippi

This?is happening all across the nation something has to be done about this people who work hard every day can't afford high rent if the govenor can't do anything about it then the president?needs to step in

Everywhere

Exactly why im on my way out of Austin now. But where to go? Lol

The sad story all over this nation… how can rents skyrocket 100%+ in the span of 5 years but wages stagnate? It just makes no sense. And then people have the nerve to complain about homeless people… well how about this? There would be no homeless people if this excessively wealthy country would at least slightly attempt to take care of its people… spend money on building homes and creating jobs instead of conquest and dropping bombs?

The gentrification of east side Austin was no joke. People with 50k now have to move to Hutto, Kyle, Buda, San Marcos, you name it Bastrop. You guys can't be serious right. Face it, you are going to have to leave the city as well. I told my dad there will be a mass Exodus out of Texas after all the people have their Exodus from California over there to here first. Everyone is going to have to trade down eventually 🙂

Working homeless my motel room went up extra $100 overnight during covid

all you have left in Austin if you build housing is pods i will not live in a pod because everyone wants to live here

Ah another success for business who can change locations and bring in thousands of jobs in a few weeks vs slow inefficient city bureaucracy that takes months or years to even recognize a shift in demand

You wanted California. Now you got it.

The fix is to stop investors from buying everything.

DENVER MILE HIGH BIG NEW SMART CITY COLORADO IS WHERE EVERYONE IS MOVING TO

new los angeles get ready for tent city everywhere

Why is the population in Austin growing?

this is NOT a case , " is what it is " housing is WAY overpriced artificial "shortages" 4:03 - where they going to get Labor, to put that concrete down, ?