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I see your point, and I'm not trying to undermine it. I guess it depends on perspective - those homes may not be desirable for you, or many people in fact, but that is a subjective thing and will depend on many factors. It seems a shade misleading to preemptively exclude certain areas of Austin from the conversation because you personally wouldn't live there.
Your assumption is off about me, too. We are certainly not living large in some reno in Barton Hills! If my wife and I ever chose to live outside of central Austin, 78745 would be the first place we would look to buy. Different strokes.
Yes, you're right that I'm definitely making some assumptions here that might not be completely accurate. I meant the 78704 comment as a joke and I'm glad that you saw it that way.
Just for kicks, I did a search in 78745 for single family homes and right at $150K there is a 1174 square foot 3 bedroom house built in 1971 with a pending status. So if that is what someone is looking for when they are moving 1400 miles across the country, that's great. The house looks like it has been upgraded pretty nicely and is fairly centrally located, but the schools are probably questionable. Personally, I could live there if I didn't have kids.
You're definitely right that there are $150K homes out there in pretty good locations that will fit for some people. However, my guess is that it wouldn't be what *most* people are looking for that are moving 1400 miles across the country as the general perception of a lot of Californians is that anything East of AZ and West of FL is dirt cheap and you can buy a 2500 square foot house with a ranch, barn, and horses for $150K. The national media keeps enforcing this with articles on Austin that aren't completey accurate when it comes to home prices. It looks to me that the median housing sales price in the Austin area was in the $190Ks last year.
I was mainly trying to counter the poster that stated "As for sprawl, as long as I can buy an acre for less than $50,000 in the suburbs, with low property taxes....". I've actually priced out an acre lot in a fairly far out suburb/town with a fairly nice house on it in Georgetown and it was almost $400K.
I was absolutely stunned to find out how pricey it is to live in the sprawl. I assumed that it cost far less than living in the city, but ... nope! Even the apartment rentals are unreal. I can't figure out why someone would pay more to rent an apartment a 45-minute drive away from the city when they could rent for the same amount in town. I guess people want new and big.
The biggest difference that I can see is that the $300K 3/2 condo I'm looking at will buy a lot more house out in the sprawl. But I'm not concerned with floor space or having a big lawn — location is far more important, and when you factor in the cost of gas, it can actually be more expensive to live in the sprawl, depending on where you work.
This doesn't quite match my experience over the last few months. I found a lot of great value in 'the sprawl' as we were focused largely on the NW Hills and parts of Circle C -- we don't have kids or plan to have kids but I wanted to be near some green as I work form home and therefore spend a lot of time in the neighborhood. When we first went out to Austin, we thought for sure that we'd end up 'in town' -- Rosedale, Brentwood, Crestview, or else South Austin but inside Mopac/Ben White/I-35. If I didn't work from home and it was just my wife and me wanting to live near stuff to do, that's probably what we would have done, but for my money the value for the buck largely did not exist inside Austin proper. It's a lot of older homes with a lot of character, some with pretty decent renovations, but you're really paying to be in town, and in most cases 'in town' meant 'off a major artery near strip malls and gas stations.' Check out 4414 Lareina Drive for something of a counter-example: a brand new home, very nicely done, surrounded by much older homes on 3 sides but a gated condo community to the back. $395k to live South of Ben White in a pretty bad school district. We looked at places further in that were smaller, perfectly good houses, but to get a 3BR/office setup of the sort we were looking for had about a $50k premium versus the burbs.
Having said that, there are definitely some pricey spots in the NW hills; we'd have loved to end up on Cat Mountain but couldn't make it work with what was available (anything that fit the bill under $400k got snapped up in 24 hours - no good for us out-of-towners) and the area around 360 is expensive, but that's to be expected when you've got views like that and are pretty near the water. Circle C looks great but it can't really compete with that for character.
I have a buddy who bought a place further north up in Jollyville for a good price, too. I guess it's relative to your expectations. For us, we saw a number of good deals and a handful of great ones that went pretty quickly (one right out from underneath us while we were thinking about it). We're quite happy with where we ended up and spent exactly as much as we set out to spend several months ago, and probably got more house than we figured we would.
Yes, you're right that I'm definitely making some assumptions here that might not be completely accurate. I meant the 78704 comment as a joke and I'm glad that you saw it that way.
Just for kicks, I did a search in 78745 for single family homes and right at $150K there is a 1174 square foot 3 bedroom house built in 1971 with a pending status. So if that is what someone is looking for when they are moving 1400 miles across the country, that's great. The house looks like it has been upgraded pretty nicely and is fairly centrally located, but the schools are probably questionable. Personally, I could live there if I didn't have kids.
You're definitely right that there are $150K homes out there in pretty good locations that will fit for some people. However, my guess is that it wouldn't be what *most* people are looking for that are moving 1400 miles across the country as the general perception of a lot of Californians is that anything East of AZ and West of FL is dirt cheap and you can buy a 2500 square foot house with a ranch, barn, and horses for $150K. The national media keeps enforcing this with articles on Austin that aren't completey accurate when it comes to home prices. It looks to me that the median housing sales price in the Austin area was in the $190Ks last year.
I was mainly trying to counter the poster that stated "As for sprawl, as long as I can buy an acre for less than $50,000 in the suburbs, with low property taxes....". I've actually priced out an acre lot in a fairly far out suburb/town with a fairly nice house on it in Georgetown and it was almost $400K.
You are probably right about that mark. Didn't mean to hijack the thread with my own sub-sub-topic
Surprisingly many of the elem. schools in 78745 have an Exemplary rating (for those to whom ratings matter), but I think when you get into MS/HS things can get questionable.
Whats the worst thing about living in Austin to you?
Poor city planning: infrastructure was not put into place for growth like it was for other large cities in Texas, such as San Antonio (loop 410, loop 1604).
As opposed to the fresh-scented conservative ones?
Yeah, hippies don't tend to take showers (I kid, I kid).
Seriously though, there is a lot to love about Austin, but every time I drive back to visit friends (I'm in S.A. now), the poor highway planning is something I notice.
Having said that, there are definitely some pricey spots in the NW hills; we'd have loved to end up on Cat Mountain but couldn't make it work with what was available (anything that fit the bill under $400k got snapped up in 24 hours - no good for us out-of-towners) and the area around 360 is expensive, but that's to be expected when you've got views like that and are pretty near the water. Circle C looks great but it can't really compete with that for character.
The 360 area is ... whoa! Pricey beyond compare. It should be interesting to see if property values hold as the price of gas increases and unemployment grows ...
I look at it this way: if I have to live so far away from Austin, there's really no point to it. I may as well work and live in Leander, Taylor, Granger, Salado or another small town and go into Austin on the weekends.
Again, it's just a question of 'how much.' If you absolutely have to live downtown and walk to things, then your money won't go very far at all. This is true of pretty much every city, and the cities where it isn't true are typically not places where you want to live downtown anyway.
At the Southeastern end of Circle C we are 12 miles and 14 minutes (in no traffic) from 6th st. Leander is 25 miles and 29 minutes out. Taylor is 37 miles and 45 minutes, Granger 49 miles and 56 minutes, Salado 52 miles and 52 minutes.
So I don't mean to split hairs, but there is a world of difference between a 15 minute drive and even a 30 minute drive if you're talking about places you'll go regularly. In NYC it'd be a 15 minute walk or 30 minute train ride to most anywhere and where I am in PA is a 15 minute drive to the closest things to do. As you try to reduce that further, what you have to pay goes up until you really do figure out the value of your time in the cost of shaving one more minute.
I also didn't find the 360 area 'pricey beyond compare' -- I found it to be on par with downtown Austin, only you're buying scenic views and a beautiful area instead of proximity to much of anything at all to do that isn't nature-related. 400k will get you a pretty cool 3 bedroom in either place but they'll be appreciably smaller than the same house in Sierra Oaks or Circle C.
But it seems to me that this conversation illustrates one of the things I like about Austin. You have a pretty big selection to choose from based on what's important to you. I could've dropped $395k to live a block off South Congress and shore up my hipster cred or I could've dropped the same amount to live in the Courtyard off 360 right next to the pennybacker and access to a boat launch. Instead I spent less and got a larger house in an area closer to town than 360 but with less to do in the immediate vicinity than I'd have in town -- but with enough jogging and biking trails that I'm entirely comfortable with that.
My attitude is also informed by by time in NYC, where the formula of paying to live close to the action is an order of magnitude greater. Been there, done that. It was awesome and I'll always think of it fondly, but now I'm 32 instead of 24 and my evenings are spent differently.
Again, it's just a question of 'how much.' If you absolutely have to live downtown and walk to things, then your money won't go very far at all. This is true of pretty much every city, and the cities where it isn't true are typically not places where you want to live downtown anyway ... My attitude is also informed by by time in NYC, where the formula of paying to live close to the action is an order of magnitude greater. Been there, done that. It was awesome and I'll always think of it fondly, but now I'm 32 instead of 24 and my evenings are spent differently.
It's all a state of mind, Aqui! I'm from Austin "way back when," so to my mind, the city terminates where Ben White and Anderson Lane (South and North, respectively) cross Lamar/IH-35. Today, people refer to what I think of as North Austin as "Central Austin," or even "downtown Austin," which is totally weird to me. For example, a lot people tell me that I live downtown, but I don't. I live in West Austin!
My problem with most outlying areas is that sure, the drive time is negligible when there's no traffic. But the vast majority of the time, there will be loads of traffic. I spend an hour in a car getting to my S.O.'s house off 360 (northwest of Austin). Heck, when I used to work in Westlake, even that turned into a 30-minute commute because that small stretch of Mopac between Enfield and the Westlake exit is so freakishly congested.
Austin may be a great place, but its infrastructure doesn't comfortably support such a big population, and it never will. I honestly don't know what our city planners are thinking.
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I guess it depends on perspective - those homes may not be desirable for you, or many people in fact, but that is a subjective thing and will depend on many factors. It seems a shade misleading to preemptively exclude certain areas of Austin from the conversation because you personally wouldn't live there. 
Different strokes.
I guess people want new and big. 
