Austin's super zips (Cedar Park, Rollingwood: middle-class, 2014, rentals)

[787]

I do hope that if their folks are giving them money, then they buy large enough houses with it, because their parent's may have to end up moving in with them. The 0% interest rate economy has destroyed the nest eggs of our senior citizens, and many have decided to invest it in their children's homes in hopes that they can eventually live with them. This may explain the "assistance" that is allowing people with average incomes to purchase homes in the "super zips"

[scm53]

78746 is muuuuuch more than Rollingwood. It is flawed logic to take the median income for an entire zip and apply it to a minute number of homes.

[10scoachrick]

Originally Posted by scm53

78746 is muuuuuch more than Rollingwood. It is flawed logic to take the median income for an entire zip and apply it to a minute number of homes.

Indeed, the basis for many statistics.

[austin-steve]

One could infer from reading the articles that I've seen recently about "super zips", that the "women's movement" caused the stratification we are now seeing. While I don't think women should have remained "oppressed", I do think it's true that Doctors use to married nurses, Lawyers use to marry secretaries, and now Doctors marry Lawyers and they both work.

The result, it's really a story of "Super Incomes" combined with hyper-focus on school ratings, and the after effects of having so many professional 2-income households clustering around "better schools" (which drives up housing values), versus the "old days" when Dad worked and mom stayed home, most schools were "average", which was ok, and homes were purchased based on price and location instead of arbitrary school rankings.

Steve

[Austin97]

Originally Posted by scm53

78746 is muuuuuch more than Rollingwood. It is flawed logic to take the median income for an entire zip and apply it to a minute number of homes.

include standard deviation and use an average and you are good to go.

[CarnivalGal]

Originally Posted by atxcio

You've also got a whole lot of very high-net worth people in those areas who may not have an annual salary/income in the traditional sense. It would depend on what they used to come up with that number.

And then you've got apartments, condos, duplexes etc. in a place like 78746. So not everyone owns a $650K house.

Good point. We have friends who live in Rollingwood area. Their house is for sale for $1.8 Million right now (they also own 3 other houses). They made a fortune in the oil business way back when and are pretty much retired now. They have a ridiculous amount of money, but I bet their actual annual income is not that high.

[Austin97]

I would be interested to see which zips have the highest percentage of stay at home moms. Are the super zips dual income or single income homes?

[scm53]

Originally Posted by Austin97

include standard deviation and use an average and you are good to go.

Doesn't change the fact that you can't take the income stats for an entire zip and analyze it against the house values in a sliver.

[scm53]

I live in one of these zips. The houses on our street are about 50/50 dual income. The median house price last year was $400K, which with a 20% down should be attainable on the median HHI of right at $130K.

Knowing my neighbors, and what they do, I would imagine that all of them can swing $130K on one income. So I'm not sure I buy Steve's premise.

[austin-steve]

Originally Posted by scm53

I live in one of these zips. The houses on our street are about 50/50 dual income. The median house price last year was $400K, which with a 20% down should be attainable on the median HHI of right at $130K.

Knowing my neighbors, and what they do, I would imagine that all of them can swing $130K on one income. So I'm not sure I buy Steve's premise.

I live in 78746. The houses in my modest neighborhood (Woddhaven) popped by about $100K in the past year, from about $400K for an older unremodeled 1800 +/- sqft home to over $500K. Mine is now worth about $200K more than what I paid in 2010. There is no rational reason for this other than Eanes Schools and proximity to downtown, both of which are the reasons we ourselves bought here.

The most recent sale, a few houses down, is a disastrous 2-story, functionally obsolete floorplan, completely outdated, undesirable and putrid in every way except location. It sold for over $500K. I met the buyer out on the street. She is putting a renter into the home for a couple of years then says they will tear it down and rebuild new after they sell their home in Rollingwood. Go figure. The want walkability to the schools and "sidewalks".

There is only 1 other teardown ever in my 'hood that I know of. Many "super-remodels" for which square footage is added and everything brought up to date. But once a few teardowns start coming, prices will start climbing even more, as we see in other areas.

We still have a very mixed demographic of retirees, young families, empty-nesters as well as more cultural diversity than one would expect in our neighborhood. But at these prices, I'm not sure who the new wave will be in the coming decade. If $500K is the new "bottom", it really causes the outcome that the article illustrates. While I like what this does to my net worth spreadhsheet and my retirement calendar, I don't like what it does in general for the fabric of the neighborhood.

Steve