downtown Austin's real estate and neighborhood blog
The video below shows off some incredible camera work capturing Austin’s beautiful scenery.
Still, I can’t help but wonder when, in the wrong hands, drone tech will cross adversely into the private lives of city residents.
Until then, this is awesome.
(h/t to Robert Youens for the link)
An inspired master plan design for Waller Creek is inching closer to reality. It’s on the agenda for City Council this Thursday. It is a big step in a project I am a big fan of, and will be another transformative measure to propel Austin into the next 100 years.
You may vaguely remember news from six months ago, or so, about city council approving a plan for Waller Creek. What actually happened is City Council approved the design team, from a national competition, but not their design plan.
Here is a PDF of the design plan. (use this backup link if that doesn’t work). If you are super interested, you can watch a presentation made to city council last week like I did. (skip to 11:00 to bypass city council doldrums.)
The plan is rather broad for council to be approving wholesale, but it appears linked to getting donors who are comfortable cutting big checks.
Highlights of the plan:
If you’ve read this far, and are like “What the heck is Waller Creek?” here is a crude cheat sheet:
Cities evolve. Few quite as visibly as Austin over the past couple of decades.
We’ve got the first look at what’s coming to the site of the former RunTex store at S. 1st and Riverside Drive. Demo permits were approved last month, and fencing has been erected around the site.
In its place, a six-story cousin (some might say “clone”) of The Crescent apartments – just down the street – is planned, called “Broadstone on the Lake.” It will feature 119 affordable units and 207 market rate ones, for a grand total of 326 apartments, according to city records.
The building is being designed by Kelly Grossman Architects, who designed the Hill Country Galleria, The Crescent and 404 Rio Grande.
I’m not going to lie. While I’m thrilled about packing in some more density into the core, I’m pretty “meh” about the whole faux-urban motif of the design. Some might say that level of design is better suited for a series of outlet malls in San Marcos. But, let’s remember that the Broadstone apartment housing brand, much like the Millennium apartment housing brand coming to Rainey Street, is a national chain of apartment complexes, and it is what it is.
Thankfully, The Catherine – a 19-story, $68 million, 300-unit residential tower beginning to be constructed next door – has some design panache. Formerly nick-named “StreetLights at Barton Springs” that building is next iteration of the Aquaterra condominium project, which fell victim to the lending withdraw of the 2008 recession.
(Also, also… the Hyatt Town Lake is removing a substantial amount of surface parking, and building a seven-story parking garage and ballroom behind the Sherry Matthews building. Austin Towers profiled the development there this past February.)
A note about RunTex
Although RunTex was a tenant and was going to get booted anyway, the poetic tragedy of the demolition coinciding with the apparent troubles of the RunTex business and brand is too dramatic to not mention here.
RunTex was founded 25 years ago, and as a fellow entrepreneur who knows about blood and sweat in pursuit of a dream, I can’t help but feel a twinge of sadness for all the people whose lives are intertwined with the bricks and pavement about to be wiped from the earth there.
It is important, though, to note that I used the word “evolve” in the first sentence of this post. Change isn’t easy, but the development of the site is a natural and healthy evolution for downtown Austin.
With the increasing amount of construction happening in the Rainey Street District, I think we have seen the last of the Google Villages and such taking the neighborhood over – at least for a while.
I’m going to lay out a summary of the transportation plan here first, then drop my two cents in the bucket on the drama surrounding it.
What to expect
City staff have settled on maintaining two-way traffic on the street, and adding sidewalks where there is not existing development taking place. The east side of the street will retain on-street, metered parking, while the west side (on the right side if you are facing the river) will be converted into a striped area with pedicab pick-ups and bike parking.
Once the sidewalks are built out, the city may move forward with converting that striped area into bike lanes.
The city will convert the turning circle into a “modern roundabout” – like this one at Rio Grande and 10th Street. The city also plans to install speed humps (not speed bumps) and up the ante on the navigational signs in and around the area.
The data supports what we all see – demand exceeds supply for downtown condos, especially dwellings priced under $500,000. May was the first month ever that both the average and median price per foot for a downtown resale was over $400/ft.
At the extremes, asking prices for new construction high-luxury condos are approaching $1000 per foot, and there are several recently recorded transactions between $700-$800 per square foot.
Downtown condo inventory as of 6/7/2013
1) total resales available = 49
2) total new construction available = 77 est.
As of this post, there are only 13 units for sale under $500,000, and built within the past 15 years, in all of downtown Austin. This leaves us with just over one month of inventory available for the largest segment of condo buyers in downtown’s core.
The lack of new product in the market is putting significant upward pricing pressure on resales. With no new condo development planned in downtown, as interest rates remain low, resale prices will continue to rise to meet the demand.
You’ll recall that back in January, for the first time, the average sales price of a new construction downtown condo exceeded, $1,000,000. There were 14 closings in May for new construction condos: the Austonian, W Hotel, and Four Seasons Residences. Spring is sold out. [UPDATE: The Four Seasons is sold out, with contracts pending.] The W and Four Seasons could officially be sold out after another couple months of sales and pending contracts close. The Austonian has a pretty good inventory remaining, but soon lacking any competition sales could accelerate quickly.
May 2013 Resale Statistics
- Total sales volume (resales only) = $12,717,900 - # of resale transactions = 22 - avg price per foot = $453 - median price per foot = $424 - avg sales price = $578,086 - avg sales price to list price (SP/LP) = 97% - avg condo size = 1275 sq. ft. - avg price per bedroom = $343,727 - avg days on market (DOM) = 43 days
May 2013 New Construction Statistics
- # of new construction transactions = 14 - avg price per foot = $700-$800/ft est. - Total new construction sales volume = not reported
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