AUSTIN, Texas — As South by Southwest (SXSW) continues in Downtown Austin, we're starting to see more people searching for Zillow listings in the capital of the Lone Star State.
Every morning, the KVUE News team takes a look at the trending Google searches in Austin. Over the past few days – since the start of SXSW on March 10 – searches for "zillow austin" have begun appearing more and more often. On Tuesday, Day 5 of the festival, "zillow austin" was the No. 2 search at around 9 a.m.
With this trend, we thought we would highlight the cost of real estate in the Austin area compared to the median salary.
A new study from Zillow found that Texas had one of "the most valuable housing markets" in the country in 2022. The total market value in Texas was totaled to $3.16 trillion in December 2022.
This extreme culmination of record-high home value growth and more new builds is due to population increase within Texas.
Florida saw the one of the largest increases in property value growth because Florida had the largest influx of new residents in the country. The state that followed right behind Florida was Texas – which makes sense because Texas surpassed 30 million residents between 2021 and 2022.
According to the U.S. Census, between 2017 and 2021, the median household income in Austin was $78,965. Something to keep in mind is this metric is in 2021 dollars and is not adjusted for inflation nor the current value of the dollar.
When adjusted to the current value of the dollar, an item that cost a dollar in 2021 costs $1.11 in 2023 – demonstrating an inflation rate of 11%.
To rent in Austin, a family of four is estimated to spend $3,773.50 without including the cost of rent, according to Numbeo, a website that tracks cost of living and property prices. When including the cost of rent, a 3-bedroom apartment costs an average of $4,622.67 within the "city center" and $2,814.09 "outside of the city center."
This would make monthly expenses culminate to $8,396.17 if a family of four wanted to live in Downtown Austin.
Now, the average cost to buy a home in Austin is $554,655, according to Zillow's Home Value Index. Depending on the area in Austin, a house could cost as much as $2.2 million – like in the Windsor Road area, which is near West Campus and in Old West Austin around Mopac.
When you break down the cost per square foot for buying an apartment in Austin, it can cost as much as $849.30 within downtown and $358.71 outside of downtown. This means that in Downtown Austin, it would cost residents $849,300 to buy an apartment.
If you're in town for SXSW festivities or any of the other spring events scheduled in Austin this spring, you may want to keep these metrics in mind if you're considering a move to the Live Music Capital of the World!
Boomtown is KVUE's series covering the explosive growth in Central Texas. For more Boomtown stories, head to KVUE.com/Boomtown.