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Strategies & Market Trends : The Residential Real Estate Crash Index -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Elroy Jetson who wrote (15532)	12/19/2003 10:39:51 AM
From: Wyätt Gwyön	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 306849

i would agree, but as you know it's playing out differently here. most of the "upper middle" end has been tanking for a couple years. thus in older neighborhoods which are not extremely fashionable there is a lot of supply in the 275-350K range, for 2000-2500sf homes. but drive a few miles to a fashionable neighborhood and it looks like Beverly Hills, where they tear down the 1930s bungalows and put in baby castles. i think there is a severe bubble in the under-200K market. this should really be an under-100K market imo. not long ago one could buy a place in just about any neighborhood (except perhaps the "starter-castles only" Rob Roy neighborhoods) at the 200K price point. now there is almost nothing in Austin proper at this level. there are a lot of former renters trying to buy in, and what has happened is that builders have just kept expanding farther and farther out, creating neighborhoods out of cow patties. the roads are overloaded and there is constant construction. this is surprising and disturbing to me. one of the reasons i moved away from SoCal was to get away from the traffic, and the mindset that it's perfectly normal to spend 2 or 3 hours a day in a car going from Point A to Point B. but for people making a commute to Austin from an edge city, i suspect nowadays they have similar commute times to what one sees out in LA.