Austin's long, painful real estate hangover
Austin's real estate market is experiencing a significant downturn after a period of rapid pandemic-era growth. Home prices have dropped by nearly 25% as high mortgage rates and an oversupply of new housing have cooled demand.
Why it matters
It highlights the volatility of pandemic-era housing booms and the economic challenges faced by homeowners who purchased at the market peak.
Getty Images; Tyler Le/BI Ryan McPherson fought hard for his piece of Austin. Back in the spring of 2022, when it seemed like everyone was angling for homes in the Texas capital, he and his wife set their sights on a tidy four-bedroom in a sprawling new development on the east side of town. They bid $20,000 above the asking price, stretching the total to $615,000, and penned a heartfelt letter to the sellers to lock in the deal. Austin was booming , and if the previous two years were any indication, that price might soon seem like a bargain. "Everybody that I worked with, they kept saying Austin only goes up," says McPherson, a surgeon who moved to the city for a job. McPherson's timing, however, couldn't have been worse.
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