I'd bet that Miami is just a few years ahead of it (entering serious decline) and within a decade Austin will be seen as an obvious-in-retrospect cautionary tale.
Austin population cratered and it still has not recovered to 2020 level. That's why the housing costs there decreased.
In other words: force citizens out of your city, and the price will fall.
Population has receded slightly in the last couple years in Austin proper, is still greater than 2020, and the metro area has not shrunk year over year at all, although growth has slowed.
Population by year:
2019: 978,763
2020 high estimate for Jan 1 (996,369) - https://austin.culturemap.com/news/city-life/01-15-20-austin...
2020: 961,855 (Census, low mark)
2023: 979,882
2024 (estimated high mark): 986,928
So yes, the population cratered from a high in early 2020. This brought down prices with a 2 year lag, as owners started to get rid of empty units. The prices will come right back up now, that the population is recovering.
A low-single-digit push to local burbs happened all over the country. "Austin" in the same way people discuss "Houston" or "Chicago" i.e. the local metro area has grown every year.
The suburbs migration IS the point. The suburbs are a superior model when it's made possible by de-urbanization of workplaces, and it shows. The price in the suburbs of Austin has been growing.
You'll see that the ACS 1-year was not performed and released in 2020 due to data quality
2015: 931840
2016: 947897
2017: 950714
2018: 964243
2019: 979263
2020: 961855 (Decennial Census), 965,872 (ACS 5-year, not comparable to 1-year), 996369 (Austin City Demographer)
2021: 964000
2022: 975335
2023: 979700
2025: 1025668
In this case we have the property that 2021 onwards shows increase in ACS and that Austin Demographics shows increase from 2020 onwards but that there is difference between 2020 numbers between sources.
We also see that Austin Demographer has higher number in 2019 than ACS sample https://demographics-austin.hub.arcgis.com/documents/cf1519a...
This means it's probably not good idea to compare 2023 ACS number to 2020 Austin Demographer number. Fortunately, we have Austin Demographer number from 2019, 2020, and 2025. From all this, we can conclude that cratering hypothesis is likely false. We must conclude that following statement of yours is unlikely:
> Austin population cratered and it still has not recovered to 2020 level.
The purported 2025 number is actually: "Population for City of Austin Full and Limited Purpose Boundaries, 2023".
I indicated that the sources are different. And the conclusion at the very best is that Austin population had been flat for years. It's now growing back, and the prices will react with a lag of 2-3 years.
It is embarrassing to be this antagonistic when proven wrong. As the kids say these days: “take the L”.
There are no consistent sources for the 2019-2024 population due to the way demographics are counted, so they have to be mixed. But they still show _at_ _most_ a weak return to growth with _at_ _most_ modest increases over the peak 2019 population.
This absolutely supports my point that the reason for the property price drop in Austin was the population decrease in 2020, rather than anything to do with new construction.
And you didn't want to spend 10 seconds to look at that, and instead spammed the thread with AI slop which is demonstrably wrong.
"Over the last 50 years, America has kind of told them, 'You can't have both'."
I'd go past that and say you probably can't have a home over 3 bedrooms without already being in an upper income bracket.
So no large families (to offset population challenges). No extended families to help the existing family. No space to help relatives relocate.
No homes for four income earners in a 4-income economy.
Edit: Since HN contrarians who'd never want their children living in some particular conditions find it so confusing how others might not too:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S01452...
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3805127/
Overcrowded living quarters is a well known vector for a huge array of problems. Academic underachievement, sexual abuse, substance abuse, mood disorders, abusive relationships, the list goes on. Even after controlling for socioeconomic status!
… traumatizing (e.g. kids growing up in households where adults would have sex in the same room have all sorts of problems
I would prefer to ride a Unicorn to work. This is pure fantasy. There will always be human violence. Preparing children for it is a lost art in sections of the world.
In many civilized/industrialized places, these children (sometimes already matured) are immediately traumatized or pretend it is of no consequence through various rationalizations. It's a cycle that repeats in throughout history.
Similarly my older relatives keep saying “but they can’t do that!” About a lot of what’s happening in the US without realising that they very much can. Because nobody is physically stopping them. The exception is my grandfather, who is an honest guy but says he got in some fights in his navy days and ended up better for it.
Maybe we need to bring back superheroes who beat the shit out of the bad guys.
I want my own daughters to know how to protect themselves with diplomacy-or- violence if the former fails.
Superheroes don't exist and never have. People who work tirelessly to chip away -- often imperceptibly -- at sources of badness exist. That's it.
No.
Two simple questions:
1. Do we want a world without violence?
2. If yes, is public hanging a step towards that world, or away from it?
2. I'm refusing to indulge your strawman. Let's use something like "is teaching your kid how to deal with bullies a step towards that world or away from it"
I didn't say it was possible. I said it's worth striving for, and then you stated the same thing with different words. We agree.
Ah so you think societies that did public hangings tended to have a strong and reasonable sense of justice.
You are wrong.
Justice in the sense of "punishing people who are legitimately antisocial" tends to yield less indulgent punishments because they recognize that true justice must be dealt cold and with solemnity.
Or do you think it's only a coincidence that the most abhorrent justice systems on the planet do public executions and "civilized" justice systems do not?
Does the fact that you can't ride a unicorn to work compel you to settle for walking 7 miles barefoot? Or is the sensible thing to do to constantly chip away at sources of badness in the world, even if you can't achieve unicorns?
It cracks me up how you try to assert the "realist" position while holding an opinion that only makes sense in a university ethics course. Public hangings don't "prepare" a child for a world with non-zero levels of violence, obviously. Living 4 adults and 8 children to a single-room household doesn't "prepare" a child for anything you'd willingly sign them up to do.
Bad things are bad. They should be avoided. You actually think this too and will take action to avoid most bad things that you can. But alas, the Internet comment box is here for you to wisely consider: Maybe bad things are not bad. Very smart, lol.
Oh my god yes, and we’re doing such a great job of that aren’t we? We have gratuitous violence on demand now.
Public hangings are fine compared to what I see on TV/Netflix.
But sex? Other people being able to see sexual depictions literally gets people's panties in a twist.
Putting aside how true such a claim is... just because something was a thing for most of human history doesn't mean it doesn't cause issues.
I suspect they had far more important things to worry about - like getting enough food.
Do you think that rape and slavery is also not going to affect people? Because those were both pretty prevalent in most of human history too, yet here the human race is - alive, with different views on those things as we did in the past.
If I choose other conditions, it’s not because of trauma but because comfort is good.
We have decades of research to show that more space and privacy is not merely a matter of comfort. Or, if it is, that "comfort" affects more things than one would expect.
I've already linked to them above.
Either I am inherently an übermensch or my methods are better. You have your loneliness epidemics, your PTSD, and your therapy. I don’t.
Or to put it evocatively:
But for the claim you're responding to, this appears to mostly just be some cringey self-aggrandizement?
The house had been built before 1920 when expectations were less grand; those rooms were much smaller than nearly any home I've been in built after 1980. When my grandpa came to visit each summer, it meant all five boys in one room, the two youngest in sleeping bags and occasionally getting stepped on in the middle of the night when one of my older brothers would get up and forget we were there.
There was also no air conditioning, nor ceiling fans. My parents had a box fan in their bedroom window during the summer. It was a big deal when the bedroom I shared with my next older brother got a box fan too; that was in high school.
We shared EVERYTHING. And strangely, it didn't kill us! In fact: it just motivated us to go to sports and clubs and stay out of the house.
Obviously less extreme, but I do not understand this "every child must have their own room" thing. They don't! And I grew up in an incredibly poor rural area, imagine living in a city where there was actual shit to do.
We all shared rooms and had less than a few square meters to ourselves. It was fine. People these days are too attached to the idea they need massive homes to live their lives.
This is a bit of segue from where we were. To brings us more in line with the topic: In the early 20th century, large and extended families lived in commonly built row housing.
Their roomier accommodations were one piece of communities that were more affordable and an overall better fit for larger groups & families (than modern housing and communities).
I always found this extraordinary because they certainly weren’t rich. I grew up in a 1200sqft house fwiw lol
Less than 1% of houses are accessible and that is a problem with aging boomers, SIL bought a home near parents to support them but when the stroke and dementia hit, the parents couldn't move in because no bedroom and only a powder room on the main floor, and they couldn't make it up/down the stairs anymore, and the parents house was too small to move into.
Lots of ways to get money from the table.
There are lots of reasons we're not having large families, but this doesn't seem like one of them. Average family size has shrunk dramatically while houses have gotten bigger. Lots of familes of 6 or more shared 1000-sqft bungalows in the past, with 2 or 3 kids in a room, so this doesn't jive.
I think you can also mention that with both parts of a marriage need to have jobs to pay the bills, moving is not just one getting a good deal in a different city, then the other part has to find something as well and wants something better or at least not worse. so two good offers is needed.
I also wonder what the timescale is.
I would presume this started as a factor of the industrial revolution. when people had farms and worked farms, I think moving about was less common as well.
When the man was
In the early to middle 20th century, you probably didn't have that. Most people lived in rural areas and you needed to move to get that job at Acme Steel Co.
When I was a kid in the late 60s through the 70s, we moved every 2 or 3 years. And this was generally not because we needed to move. It was because my parents decided they wanted to move somewhere different. From Seattle to the gulf coast of TX when I was 1 because my dad wanted to live somewhere sunny & warm. From TX to the Oregon Coast when I was 12 because my parents missed the PNW. Of the several moves in between I can only think of maybe 3 that were for jobs - but even then, it was generally by choice more than necessity.
I have a pet theory that this is a significant factor in why people are moving to cities: Families with two earners need a single shared location that has enough variety/density of jobs that both can work.
In contrast, a single breadwinner makes it easier to stay in a specialized company-town or to move.
It’s a common pattern in the US that we find a way to monetize normal human interaction. No hitchhiking, no free community gathering, no neighbors, no autonomy to children, no intergenrational housing.
It’s like we cannot fathom having a responsibility that doesn’t involve getting paid. This is good for the GDP though!
So, a lot of people will be looking to move as soon as they can afford it.
As a percentage, how big do you think the home ownership problem is? Guess: 10? 15?
If I told you that home ownership is un-moveable would you believe me? That the percentage is less that 6 from peak to trough?
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/RHORUSQ156N
63 percent of US households owned the home they lived in in 1960, we peaked around 2008 at 69 percent and are about 65 today.
Home ownership is functionally an un-moveable number.
But the housing problems, corporate ownership, rent prices, young people can't afford houses....
These things aren't housing problems. They are social ones.
First, we are using housing much differently: https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2023/06/more-than-a-q... -- Lots of us are living alone, including the old. The boomers aren't moving in with the kids, or to homes, or shacking up together (the Golden Girls is a quaint bit of history that does not happen today). This has created a massive amount of pressure on the housing stock we have.
And that Corporate ownership problem: It is hyper local (Atlanta, Phoenix, Tampa are major markets). One would think that these things being a local issue would have local resolutions. Except the biggest predictor of voting is "home ownership" and the biggest predictor of turn out is "anything that harms the price of homes". There is simply no political will locally to change this.
But the bulk of Investor Owned Properties aren't corporate, they are people with 2nd homes. These aren't "places people could live" they are homes in markets that only exist as tourist destinations. The condo in Florida for snow birds, The house at the beach, by the lake or in the mountains for a weekend getaway.
One of the largest factors in run away cost is where the money is. I hate to say this but that older generation that isn't moving in with kids, or shacking up like golden girls... they have ALL the cash. You don't have to believe me but as these people pass things will change and it has a name: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Wealth_Transfer
And yes, lack of mobility, the missing middle, zoning (back to that pesky voting things contribute) aren't helping. And so do tenants rights (the parts of these that helped end shared living situations from house mates to boarding houses).
Do we have a housing problem, Yes. The real fixes are going to be unpopular because the facts are in conflict with how people feel
Wouldn’t measuring dynamics of home ownership using a unit “households” cause all sorts of problems? Consider two people who would get married and become a “households” except they’re too poor to live together so they each cohabitate with their parents. Every household in this example that owned a house in 1960 (the two sets of parents) still does, but the example shows a pretty serious housing problem.
I had the same impression at first as well. But a household is a household is a household. That massive increase in people living alone follows the same 60/40 split on ownership that more "traditional" married couples would.
The affordability of housing has changed since the 60's, 70's and 80's. And it's what your intuition is picking up on. And it does relate to what is a household, but not because it's a poor measure but because the housing stock we have no longer matches how we use housing.
If you go back to 1985, the boomers were in their prime years and housing was much more affordable than today. The greatest generation was dying off, and in their golden years they lived together (The literal plot of golden girls), in homes or moved in with kids.
The boomers are NOT doing that. They are occupying multi bedroom housing stock, as couples or alone. This has created much of their wealth and lots of price pressure on younger generations. The millennials will tell you "housing was worse for them" and it was: the two large cohorts competing for the limited supply, and one was deeply entrenched already.
Do note that boomers aren't the only ones "living alone more" its a fairly equal distribution but they have the first mover advantage, historic pricing advantage, and tend to be the ones occupying multi bedroom housing alone creating the utilization pressure.
And the Golden Girls type living situations are unviable today for legal reasons. Overly broad tenants rights have killed the concept of co-habitation (roomates/housemates) turning 2,3, and 4 bedroom houses into single family homes, and zoning + tenants rights have finished off the boarding house (there might be hand full left in the US, this was the plot of another 80's tv series).
Telling The boomers to move in with the millennials is going to be massively unpopular with both groups. Telling renters that "you get less rights" is going to be politically impossible (even if it is only for 'housemates' situations). Death or a major change to Americans political will are the only fixes that we are going to see.
how so? in austria/germany this kind of living is very common for students. and we have way more tenant rights than the US. even in the US i lived like that.
i don't see what tenant rights have anything to do with that.
The concept of "professional tenants" is a thing here. After the us's more drawn out eviction process, and then the actual delay in carrying it out, it is nearly impossible to get missing or unpaid funds back.
Just allowing city hall to get their palms greased to build infinity "luxury" comblocks everywhere isn't going to change shit. Communities should have a strong say in what does or does not go, barring major critical infrastructure, and if you don't like and don't live there, tough shit. We'd be better served putting our thumb on the scale to make it possible for an average family to be able to live well off of one income and encourage resiliency by decentralizing and making it favorable to do more actual jobs locally ("efficiency" be damned).
When I was a kid (in the late 60s and through the 70s) we moved every two or three years on average. And these weren't just the move across town kinds of moves - a lot of them were half way across the country. When I was 1 we moved from Seattle to the TX gulf coast because my dad wanted to live somewhere warm and sunny. Then to SoCal then back to TX then back to SoCal and again back to TX and then to the Oregon coast. I was thinking the other day that people don't move like that anymore - in most of those moves my parents didn't have work lined up, they just moved and found work. When I was about 12 we moved from TX to the Oregon Coast because my parents were missing the PNW - my dad had just gotten his teaching degree and he figured he'd just move up to Oregon and find a teaching gig, which turned out to be quite hard in the mid-70s. Basically, he sent out a bunch or resumes to Oregon school districts just prior to leaving. They had subscribed to a newspaper from the town they wanted to move to and then signed up for a rental house sight unseen (that was the return address for all of those resumes). We pulled into town with a U-Haul and TX plates and within about 15 minutes 3 different people screamed at us to go back to where we came from (ahh, Oregon in the 70s). I don't think people make a move like that nowadays. I thought it was fairly normal then, but there's no way I'd do that now and in fact we haven't moved in 15 years and that was just a move a few miles away.
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