East Austin (sales, real estate, lofts)

[plaidmom]

Anyone else catch the article in the Times this morning?

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/10/re...ref=realestate

Might be useful for some folks considering a move to Austin.

[gigi927]

Great article....I haven't spent much time in that part of town and it is really refreshing to hear how the city is taking steps to make gentrification happen in a way that is a win-win for as many people as possible.

[Lockett The Lender]

Good article, I'm not real sure about the cities intentions and I have my doubts. One thing is for sure, that property has gone up, is going up, and will continue to do so.

[deeptrance]

Thank you for posting that link! I love that article! I lived on the east side for about 11 years and it was great, I wish I hadn't sold my house cuz now I can't afford to go back there!

[southaustingal]

Man, hate to be a cynic, but I wonder what's going to happen to lower income folks when they're taxed out of their appreciating homes. Bummer.

[carolinajack]

southaustin gal, i wanted to know the same thing but when i asked I was shot down.

with them real estate folks always selling upscale housing, who markets to the working class and lower middle class?

who cares about those who cant afford $400,000 dollar homes and lofts?

who even cares about the working men and women anymore?

[southaustingal]

Originally Posted by carolinajack

with them real estate folks always selling upscale housing, who markets to the working class and lower middle class?

who cares about those who cant afford $400,000 dollar homes and lofts?

Builders in the 'burbs. Lots of middle-income families have been pushed to the 'burbs because of escalating costs.

I had to laugh at one developer in central Austin who was marketing condos for low-income folks. The starting price was $200K. Maybe the developer should qualify his market as "low-income Californians."

[deeptrance]

This issue of "it hurts the poor" comes up in about 50 thousand different socioeconomic topics. The question to me is not "how can we change this so it won't hurt the poor?", it's "How can we change the economic system so that we're not constantly worrying about the poor?"

See the difference? This is my primary beef with liberals. There's an assumption that there are poor people and we have to give them stuff like "affordable housing" and food stamps and welfare. How about we get over ALL of that and address the root causes of poverty?

And ya'd have to read my forthcoming book (which I'm too lazy to ever write) to know what my proposals are for getting rid of all this liberal BS that wastes much-needed resources on bandaids for "the poor." Let the market work, but fix it. The free market isn't free, that's the problem. It's semi-monopolistic, our tax system is regressive and penalizes companies for hiring people at decent wages, and there are countless incentives for the rich to get richer while we provide disincentives to the poor to keep them down, via bad education systems and handouts and all kinds of other means by which we perpetuate the situation.

[Lockett The Lender]

Originally Posted by carolinajack

southaustin gal, i wanted to know the same thing but when i asked I was shot down.

with them real estate folks always selling upscale housing, who markets to the working class and lower middle class?

who cares about those who cant afford $400,000 dollar homes and lofts?

who even cares about the working men and women anymore?

Many people care, but lets be honest a commission on a 400k home is much more attractive than a commission on a 100k home. For some it is also much easier to work with a client looking for a 400k home , because 9 time out of 10 these people have all their ducks in a row and have better credit. Personally I market to a wide variety of clients, and I welcome all home prices.

[deeptrance]

Originally Posted by Lockett The Lender

Personally I market to a wide variety of clients, and I welcome all home prices.

I think you represent the majority of people in the industry. My experience of having been an agent in California and of having been a buyer and seller of real estate in several locations in 3 different states, it has all been good. This notion that the industry only wants to push high prices and is full of evil greedy people is no more true than it is of shoe salesmen, carpenters, graphic artists, or any other occupation. It's just much more visible and easy to criticize the R.E. industry because they're our interface with the most expensive and emotionally challenging purchases and sales we'll make in our lives.

Greed? Sure. In every walk of life. RE doesn't have any more of it than the rest of society, and the average agent doesn't make enough to support a single person, let alone a family. About 20% of agents do most of the work and get most of the commissions, and very few of them ever reach the income levels of CEO's, professional athletes and entertainers, corporate attorneys, smart investors or neurosurgeons. And amazingly, there are a lot of truly GOOD people in real estate, and they're often the ones who do well because referrals are such an important source of clientèle.