I’ve mentioned this several times before:
1. Texas, and Austin, have much more new build land available than many other locations, especially California. This keeps prices from extreme increases, usually.
2. But Dbeasy, Austin shot up during Covid. Yes, and this was an anomaly. While the Austin real estate market is generally healthy, there was a feeding frenzy due to big money coming in and buying up housing. Opendoor, Blackrock, etc. And, work from home led to a surge in Austin from people coming from high real estate priced markets. Both of those things have run their course. In addition, the extreme politics of the state is definitely affecting migration here. Prices went way too high too fast, and they’ve been correcting since.
3. Tech is one of the main employment and housing drivers in Austin. Austin has always been a secondary location for most tech companies with significant employment. When the economy falters, like now, Austin gets cut harder and faster than core locations. Dallas does too, but they are starting to get more self sufficient.
Long term the Austin market is fine. But it’s impossible to forecast the near term because Austin has not dealt with a serious recession since 2008, and even then Texas didn’t not get hit hard in real estate during that crash.