Sunday, November 28, 2021

11/28/21 Housing Is Out Of Control Here In Austin?

     Yesterday was a fairly chill day for us, the only thing going on was Baby A planned on meeting his friends at the mall and he really didn't want us there babysitting him, so we dropped him off and then left.  We had no plans and eventually ended up driving around and I decided to go look at some houses, mostly because Boy insists that he is getting ready to go out and buy one.  Last week I had made a run and looked at some houses, I really liked this community about 5 miles away going south on I-35 and then turning where the toll road meets the freeway a couple miles away.  The one I really liked was Meritage Homes, which are known to make higher end homes, I don't want Mijo buying some crappy house and then regretting his purchase.  These houses start closer to $350,000, even if the online adds mentioned from the $300's.  

    As much as this seemed expensive, I was a little taken aback by the house prices in the huge community across the freeway from Cabela's.  It is a huge master planned community, I have a friend who lives in there and I like this community too, but we stopped last night and talked to two of the builders and the prices were from the mid $450's for the smaller ones we could see were already built to the other builder saying he didn't have any available but when they do get some ready to offer, they sell from the $550's to $650's.  There is nothing really special about these houses other than they are in the Austin area and the sales lady even seemed a bit apologetic agreeing with me when I said the prices were crazy.  She said these same houses were selling from the $200's in 2019, but the market had exploded, so their prices were just keeping up with what the market demanded.

    I want to think that this is a bubble but then we hear Samsung is breaking ground on a new $17 billion dollar fab and Tesla will be running in the coming year in their new plant in Del Valle making batteries for their electric cars and I just don't see prices coming down for any reason.

    One of the salesmen did throw out an idea that I hadn't considered, and I am not sure I want to, but it might be a way for Boy to get into a house.  We refinance our house and take out $30,000-$40,000 to help with his down payment.  I don't know that I would like to do this, but I do want to see Mijo succeed and start out his new life as he approaches his 30's.  We shall see, he needs to get real serious, not spend his weekends entertaining the girlfriend at the Renfest and Dallas and then spend the weeknights telling us how he really wants to get a house.  I need to see some sacrifices on his end.

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