investing

Austin Real Estate Investing Not Always Profitable

October 28, 2011

Sylvia and I just sold a couple of acreage lots that we purchased in Oak Hill back in Feb 2007. For those who remember, Austin’s real estate market was still running full tilt in early 2007. I bought three lots in a new subdivision, we built a new custom home on one of them and [...]

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Is Some Austin Real Estate Worth Zero? Yes.

December 6, 2010

I previewed some real estate listings today that I wouldn’t own for free. These were condos in SE Austin priced in the $30Ks range. I’ve seen these listings online and I know the area, but curiosity finally got the best of me so I went and had a look to see just how bad a [...]

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Austin Real Estate Market Update – July 2009 Stats

August 26, 2009

It’s getting real hard to write about the Austin real estate market when month after month it just keeps doing what is expected, treading water overall, doing well under $200K, especially close in, and still soft in the $400K+ price ranges. That really sums it up, month after month. At the beginning of the year [...]

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Austin Real Estate Market Update – May 2009 Stats

June 18, 2009

The Austin real estate market continues to chug along in a manner that would be considered unimpressive if not for the fact that it was expected to be doing so much worse by so many. Average sold prices are down about 3.5% and the Median is down about 2.25%. We’ll take take that. I’m not [...]

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Austin Real Estate Investing – Then and Now

May 2, 2009

Since the end of WWII, rent prices in the U.S. have run parallel to relative sales prices consistently over time. By this I mean that a $60K home would normally rent for about $600 per month, or 1% of its sales value. The chart below illustrates the gap in sale to rent value ratios that has [...]

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Huttoparke Problems Continue, Values Suffer

April 22, 2008

It is with great fascination that I first saw last year Huttoparke home owners made sure that everyone knew how poorly their homes were built. They may have had no choice but to bring public attention to the problems they were having. The homeowners felt that Lennar was unresponsive to their complaints about poor construction [...]

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