“The argument, it’s worth clarifying, is not simply that cheap housing makes a metro area attractive; if that were true the Midwest would be booming. It is that a very elastic housing supply in the face of steady demand will allow for massive population growth.
“Austin added 30,221 people between April 2010 and June 2011, a rate of more than 2,000 per month. Alongside this population growth, the Austin-Round Rock-San Marcos MSA has experienced tremendous economic growth. Real GDP rose 6.97 percent from 2009 to 2010, while the area added 21,900 jobs in 2011, helping to lower the unemployment rate to 6.2 percent that year. In 2010, 15 percent of housing units in the metropolitan area were five years old or less, the highest such proportion among all metropolitan areas reviewed by 24/7 Wall St. While many regions had weak housing markets in 2011, Austin housing prices actually rose in the fourth quarter of 2011 versus the last quarter of the previous year, reaching a median price of $188,000.
Impressive growth numbers. We’re close to downtown and there’s very little housing inventory available. The houses don’t even hit the market. All we see are “contract pending.”
“In the next five to 10 years, you’ll see tens of billions, if not hundreds of billions, of dollars of private equity” pouring into the single-family rental business..
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