Q's about downtown condo market (Austin: for sale, real estate, condos)

[AustinExPat]

I've been scouring the listings for a possible downtown condo purchase and a couple of things about the situation struck me as strange:

- The 360 building has a waiting list of 140+, but another new highrise in progress barely four blocks away is only about 50% sold. Do sales accelerate as a building gets closer to completion?

- Milago is almost new, but condos for resale in Milago are much cheaper per square foot than in the unfinished highrises. Milago is further from Whole Foods than, e.g., 360, but it's still attractively close to the Hike and Bike trail. I'm not seeing why there should be such a difference in asking price ($350/sqft vs $490/sqft) between almost-new and almost-built. Are resales generally a better value for the buyer than new/presale condos? Is this just a case of location making the biggest difference?

Also, I have this question:

- Can I look up actual sales prices for Austin real estate? Where do I find them? Where I live, sales prices are noted in the public record.

Thanks in advance!

[achtungpv]

Probably because condos are the first type of real estate to take off in a price boom and the first and hardest to fall in a bust. You could be seeing the leading edge of the bust.

[AustinGuy]

Prices at the 360 were under $350/sq ft when they first went up for sale. Probably why you are seeing the waiting list there since prices were lower than what is being offered at other new developments.

[orbius]

Friendly piece of advice. Get the condo scoured over by an engineer before you buy and have this engineer or a specialist do a STC(sound transmission class) test between the condo of an adjoining unit. Do not take the realtors word, do not just assume it will be 'ok'. It probably wont, the builders have their hands around the city governments throat and even the basic STC restrictions in the international building code that the city adopted were omitted.

So basically there is no building code for noise concerns in Austin.

Also keep in mind about not only the potential of noise from clomping feet above you. But also consider the potential of about a dozen A/C units that might be on the roof of a condo.