10/6/21 Is This Ridiculous Housing Market Cooling?

     I moved to Austin in 1991 for school, go Longhorns, and decided to stay here when I finished in 1994.  Wife then joined me and we started our life, from the bottom, with a Boy on the way, living on food stamps and the usual government help, we got started not knowing where we were headed, but optimistically.  Thirty years later, I think we have done alright, moving from our first house to this one in 2007, we have seen Austin go through many changes and I can't say I am happy about it all.

    When we were new here, it was all exciting and felt like an adventure every day.  I always thought of the malls as these magical places since we grew up in a small town and only got to go to a mall maybe twice a year, for school clothes and maybe some Christmas shopping.  Back then, there were at least 4 malls, each with its own flavor, now we are down to two, if you count Lakeline Mall in Cedar Park, but it is pretty much a clone of Barton, with all the same stores, so I count it as one mall.  The excitement to go out for a walk in the middle of the week kind of fizzled out from that activity, then because of the population expansion, going downtown turned into an exercise in determination, only to have to witness homelessness and beggars, something I don't care for.

    All this aside, in the past couple of years, we hear something like 150 new people are moving into the area which caused the housing market to explode and prices just about doubled in a year's time.  We bought our house for $340,000 in 2007.  According to Zillow, during the height, the valuation was above $800,000.  This sounded crazy, and did make me think it would be awesome to sell and keep half that money as profit, but then what?  Where would we live?  I am almost glad to see prices coming down to a more realistic value, now our house is saying the value is more between $690,00 and $720,000.  Still crazy expensive, but the number doesn't sound as scary.  We have been here almost 15 years.

    I saw some Youtube videos talking about Austin is fixing to have a market crash, the prices can't be sustained and people are pulling back.  I hope this is true in that I want Boy to able to afford a house close to us, if we are going to stay here.  I have been thinking maybe we should just leave entirely, but I do like my job and the question would still be "where do we go?"  I want to be by water, but just about all the lakes within 100 miles are now pricing their waterfront properties over a million bucks, so that sounds impossible.  The reality with both my boys anchored here, we are stuck here as well.  I don't think we are going to voluntarily move far away from them.  I need Austin to go back to what it was about twenty years ago, have about half the people move away so the highways aren't always so clogged.