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360 Condominiums on 360 Nueces Street is home to more than 430 luxury homes. (Laura Figi/Austonia)
Boomtown Austin is now the seventh least affordable city in the U.S. and is expected to become the least affordable metro area outside of California by the end of the year, according to a new Zillow report.
Sandwiched between Riverside, California and Miami-Fort Lauderdale, Florida, Austin fell six spots on the affordability rankings. By the end of the year, the capital city is expected to pass historically expensive cities like Seattle and New York.
In a healthy budget, rent should eat up no more than 30% of one's monthly income and anything above is considered "housing burdened." According to Zillow, monthly rent consumed 28.6% of renter budgets in Austin in June 2021 and that portion is set to rise to 29.6% by December.
As for homeowners, mortgage payments took up 25.3% of homeowners' monthly income in June and are expected to rise to 30.1%, effectively becoming a burden, in December. By then, the only more expensive markets will be in sunny California.
If mortgage rates stay the same, the average Austin metro-area homeowners will pay $3,021 per month. If the rates rise by 3.5% or more, mortgage payments will increase to $3,125.
What's hurting:
An influx of California migrants, which Zillow calls the "Great Reshuffling," have historically come in with larger salaries in search of cheaper property. People who are used to paying higher prices for lodging may be able to stomach the housing increase but many Austin residents will not.
Fortunately, Zillow says "rapid deterioration in affordability is likely to contribute to a slowdown in appreciation going forward" because "as these conditions persist, affordability will suffer and home value appreciation and rent growth are likely to slow over the mid- to longer-term."
What may help:
In order to get housing costs back on track to an affordable level, Zillow said relaxing zoning restrictions may help as it creates easier paths to building more inventory. By increasing the supply of affordable housing units, including high-density units like condos and apartments, it could help bridge the gap for those who can't afford current prices.
As of June, 18 of the 50 largest metro areas are paying more than 30% for housing each month. By the end of December, that number is expected to jump up to 21, and Austin isn't far behind.
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Our 15-year-old granddaughter and her sister, 12, have spent summer weeks with us, usually separately so that we could better get to know each individually. In visits focused on Austin and Port Aransas, the girls seemed to be developing an affection for Texas.
Houston and Dallas are two great American cities, the 4th and 9th largest, each loaded with cultural treasures, each standing in glittering and starchy contrast to Austin’s more louche, T-shirts and shorts ways.
Three hours up I-35, Dallas loomed before us as a set of gray skyscrapers in a filmy haze, accessed only through a concrete mixmaster of freeways, ramps and exits. I drove with false confidence. Be calm, I said to myself, it will all end in 10 minutes under the hotel entrance canopy. And it did.
The pool at the Crescent Court Hotel in Dallas. (Crescent Court Hotel)
We stayed three nights at the Crescent Court Hotel ($622 a night for two queens), a high-end hotel in Uptown, patronized by women in white blazers, business people in suits, and tall, lean professional athletes, their shiny Escalades and Corvettes darting in and out, and other celebrities like Bill Barr, the former attorney general who shoe-horned his ample self into a Toyota.
Each morning as I walked to Whole Foods for a cappuccino, a fellow identified by a bellman as Billy the Oilman arrived in his Rolls Royce Phantom. Where does he park? “Wherever he wants to. He likes the Starbucks here.”
We garaged our more modest set of wheels for the visit. We were chauffeured for tips by Matt Cooney and Alfonza “The Rev” Scott in the hotel’s black Audi sedan. They drove us to museums, restaurants and past the enclaves of the rich and famous. In Highland Park, The Rev pointed out the homes of the Dallas Cowboys' Jerry Jones and Troy Aikman along with the family compound of the Hunts, oil and gas tycoons.
The Dallas Museum of Art’s “Cartier and Islam” exhibit (until Sept. 18) attracted an older crowd; the nearby Perot Museum of Nature and Science was a powerful whirlpool of kids’ groups ricocheting from the Tyrannosaurus Rex to the oil fracking exhibit. Watch your shins.
A Geogia O'Keeffe oil painting called "Ranchos Church, New Mexico" at the Amon Carter Museum of Modern Art. (Rich Oppel)
For us, the best museum was the Amon Carter Museum of Modern Art in Fort Worth, a 50-minute, madcap drive away via a 75 mph toll lane along I-30. Don’t try it during rush hour. The Carter has an exquisite collection of Remington paintings and sculptures and an excellent array of 19th and 20th-century paintings as well. Pick one museum? The Amon Carter. Peaceful, beautiful, uncrowded, free admission and small enough to manage in two hours.
The Fort Worth Stockyards, a place of history (with a dab of schmaltz), fun and good shopping, filled one of our mornings. The 98 acres brand the city as Cowboy Town, with a rodeo and a twice-daily (11:30 a.m. and 4 p.m.) cattle drive. We shopped for boots, drank coffee and watched the “herd” of 18 longhorns. So languid was their progress that if this were a real market drive the beef would have been very tough and leathery before it hit the steakhouse dinner plate.
The cattle drive at the Fort Worth Stockyards. (Rich Oppel)
But we could identify: the temperature was 97. “I saw a dog chasing a cat today,” said the emcee, deploying a very old joke. “It was so hot that both were walking.”
With limited time, we chose three very different restaurants:
- Nobu, in the Crescent Court Hotel; Jia, a modern Chinese restaurant in Highland Park; and Joe T. Garcia’s in Fort Worth. Nobu’s exotic Japanese menu set us back $480, with tip, for four (we had a guest), but it was worth it.
- Jia was an ordinary suburban strip mall restaurant, but with good food and a reasonable tab of $110 for four.
- Joe T.’s is an 85-year-old Fort Worth institution (think Matt’s El Rancho but larger), a fine Mexican restaurant where a meal with two drinks was $115.
Sushi at high-end restaurant Nobu. (Crescent Hotel)
It was all a splurge for a grandchild’s visit. Now we will get back to our ordinary road trips of Hampton Inns, where a room rate is closer to the Crescent Court’s overnight parking rate of $52. And to corner cafes in small towns.
Did Dallas change our 15-year-old’s view of Texas? “Yes. I think it’s a lot cooler than I did. The fashion, the food.” So, not only Austin is cool. Take Texas as a whole. It’s a big, complex, diverse and wonderful state.
