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The Crossland Team
Sylvia Crossland, Broker Steve Crossland, MPM (512) 301-5811 |
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Austin Rental Home Market Still Favors Renters
February 28, 2006
Despite all the great news about our booming sales market in Austin, many of the sales are to investors and the result is an over-supplied rental market. Renters have never had it so good! In Austin TX you can rent a 4000+ square foot brand new home on a golf course for $2200 per month! Oh, and that comes with all the amenities including pool, and recreation facilities. The typical family homes however, 3 bdrm 2 baths with a double garage, about 1800 square feet, lease for between $1,100 and $1,200 on average. You pay between $150,000 and $180,000 to purchase one of these typical rental homes in an area with good schools.
Austin’s Booming Market
February 25, 2006
Here is another article from today’s Austin Statesman regarding Austin’s strong real estate market. What we really have happening in Austin at the moment is a set of markets within the market. In fact, there are certain neighborhoods within which homes are selling so fast we have to get our buyer’s offers in on day one or we are too late. Other areas are strong but not crazy. And we are starting to see plenty of over-optimistic sellers who think the market will respond to pricing that is too high. This article touches on these topics and more.
Austin Real Estate Market Continues Heating Up
February 25, 2006
Today’s Austin Statesman has several good real estate articles in the Business scection. I’m posting one below. The stories essentially state, among other things, that it’s becoming harder for buyers to find homes priced under $200,000 or close to downtown.
This is true to some extent, and we’ve certainly had our share of buyers miss out on multiple offer deals recently. But there are still plenty of homes out there at the moment, even as the supply dwindles. What is getting tougher is to find the best deals. Some of our buyers are having to write 3 to 5 offers before getting the home they want. Our job is to make sure they don’t get caught up in the frenzy of a bidding war and pay too much for the home while at the same time encouraging offers than can be competitive. Buyers who hesitate and do too much hand wringing may find that 6 months from now the homes they passed on look like a great deal that was missed. I’ll write more about the ins and outs of this soon, but for now, I think the article below is a pretty good one to read.
Las Vegas Real Estate Convention – Part 2
February 23, 2006
If you read my first post about mine and Sylvia’s arrival and first day in Las Vegas for the Keller Williams real estate convention, you know that we spent a lot of time waiting in big lines. The lines never did decrease but we acclimated, or were assimilated perhaps, to the drudgery involved in pedestrian mobility at the convention. On our 4th and final day here, the bottom line is it’s been a great trip.
We’ve been inspired, motivated and educated. Most of all, there remains no doubt that our decision to join Keller Williams less than 7 months ago, after being independent since 1993, was a good one. This is a company we are proud to be associated with and these are people we want to be in business with.
Now the challenge is to return home and apply what we’ve gained into actions that will produce better results for our Buyers and Sellers.
Blogging From Las Vegas Real Estate Convention
February 20, 2006
Sylvia and I arrived in Las Vegas last night for the Keller Williams real estate convention. Neither of us has been to Las Vegas in our 15 years of marriage, and we have no other reason to come here since we don’t drink, gamble or smoke. Since our arrival, we have spent more time standing in massive lines and waiting than we have in over 20 years living in Austin. I’m not joking.
First, we waited for our luggage at the airport – over an hour at the carousel. We were grateful that our bag finally appeared. Then we waited about another hour in a long serpentine line for a cab ride to our hotel. I’m not a time/motion expert, but it doesn’t take an urban planning engineer to see that the method employed to get people out of the airport and into cabs is extremely inefficient in Las Vegas, or at least it was on this night. It would work well to herd cattle into the backs of trucks, but it’s not the best way to move large numbers of people into cabs.
Austin city council passes moratorium on some residential projects
February 10, 2006
This is a followup to my blog article earlier this week regarding the possibility that Austin will impose certain construction and remodel limits in older neighborhoods.
I’m just going to reprint what appears in the Austin Statesman today …
Interesting new Real Estate website – www.Zillow.com
February 8, 2006
Zillow.com is online now. This is the much anticipated real estate website launched by the guy who started Expedia.com, which changed the travel industry (80% of all travel is now booked online).
Zillow lets you:
• Instantly get valuations for over 40 million homes in the U.S.
• See historical sales and comps of nearby homes
• Refine the valuation estimate for a home
• Determine how future remodeling can impact resale value
I took it for a spin and the results were mixed.
Read more
Should Austin Limit Home Sizes?
February 8, 2006
The Austin City Council is considering whether to limit the construction of “McMansions” – big homes that replace smaller homes that are demolished or removed. Central Austin Neighborhoods such as Tarrytown, Hyde Park, Travis Heights, Clarksville and Crestview are areas where lot values will support the construction of new or remodeled homes much larger that the homes originally built. Owners of the smaller homes in these neighborhoods complain that the giant remodels/rebuilds dwarf the quiant cottages of yesteryear, and that an unsightly and asthetically unbalanced mix of homes is created by these big homes.