- Austin ranked no. 5 best tech city behind the Bay Area, Washington D.C., Seattle and New York City for having tech jobs and talent.
- Office rents rose 30 percent in five years and vacancy rate fell 10.1 percent during the same period, ending in the first quarter of 2016.
- The Austin real estate market surged this spring but has since begun to cool off with more inventory and slowing price growth.
Austin mural/Flickr user mr-numb
Austin is inching up the ranks as one of the top tech cities in the nation.
According to the recent Scoring Tech Talent ranking from CBRE Group Inc., the city moved up three spots from its 2015 slot to No. 5, sitting just behind the San Francisco Bay Area, Washington D.C., Seattle and New York City.
The city ranked high for the tech industry for a few reasons, one of them being the addition of 24,590 tech jobs between 2011 and 2015. In that same period, the city produced 9,758 tech graduates.
The presence of colleges and universities in the area not only helps deliver a consistent pool of tech talent, but it also attracts more millennials from elsewhere.
In Austin, the growth of the 20-something millennial population was 12,800 since 2009, which totaled 11 percent of the share of the entire population growth during that time period. Austin is also home to a share of 20.2 percent millennials, the report says, making it one of the most millennial-centric cities reported.
Austin had the reported largest dip in vacancy rate for office spaces of all the metros surveyed. In the last five years, the vacancy rate fell 12.2 percent to 10.1 percent reported in the first quarter of the year.
The price of office space is on the rise, too: In the same five-year period, the price per square foot increased 30 percent to $32.65.
With all of this growth, the question that remains is its impact on the local housing market.
The heat is cooling for Austin real estate
It may be hitting 100 degrees outside in Austin, but the housing market isn’t going through as much of a heat wave. According to Altos Research, a real estate data company based in California, the housing market in Austin surged for the first part of the year and has since started to tick back down.
But this isn’t much of an indication of a weakening market — rather, a balancing one.
Home prices in Austin were steadily climbing since January to a peak of nearly $580,000 for the seven-day median average, which was nearly hit at the tail end of April. However, the seven-day average started to slowly dip in the following months to drag the weighted 90-day average down. As of July 1, the weighted average was reported at $561,615.
This dip in prices was also likely fueled by a growth in inventory.
At the start of the month, there were 2,415 properties available, but there were below 1,900 at the start of March. The past few months have seen solid growth in both the seven-day and 90-day averages for inventory in Austin.
Despite all this cooling off, the market is still heavily in favor of homesellers, pointing directly to a strong market.
