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Jude Galligan

The Gen Y Guy: Jason Dorsey @ BookPeople

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Jason Dorsey, local author and friend of Downtown Austin Blog, is launching his latest book, Y Size Your Business, tonight at BookPeople.  Jason is known across the globe as the “Gen Y Guy” from his 1800+ keynote speeches on engaging and retaining Gen Y in the workplace.  Come on out and support a local author.  If you’re interested in generational dynamics, and/or interested in new and effective tools to improve your company’s corporate culture, you will be impressed with Jason’s message.  I hope to see you there!

Location: Bookpeople
Date/Time: Tuesday, December 1st @ 7pm

-Jude

Will The MACC Build A Tower In The Rainey Street District?

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It’s called Nahua Tower, and it’s a mixed-use tower design by Bercy Chen Studio.  “Bold” is an appropriate adjective to describe this design. Perhaps this is simply a conceptual exercise. But, if this or something like it were to ever get built, I believe it could be a showpiece for the city. Click the image and you’ll be taken to the Bercy Chen website where you can watch video of virtual ‘fly overs’ of the rendered building.

Nahua Tower Design By Bercy Chen Studio, Background Rendering by Mopacs @ SkyscraperPage

The Nahua Tower is being designed in collaboration with the Mexican American Cultural Center (MACC) in Austin Texas. The tower will be built as an annex to the existing cultural center and provide an extension to the MACC’s existing facilities as well as residential condominiums. The base of the tower contains event, retail, and restaurant spaces, while the upper 28 floors are primarily residential condominiums.

The project takes inspiration from pre-colombian pyramidal architecture and incorporates these vernacular precedents into a modern tower using many traditional materials such as copper, onyx, and pit-house style bermed construction.

Thanks to KevinFromTexas for the heads up – the Nahua Tower concept/vision has been on the books for a while now.

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The December Discount

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I’m sympathetic with contrarian investing practices.  You’ve likely heard that, in the real estate market, spring and summer are the “buying” seasons.  If that’s true, then there is an economic case for improving your purchasing power during the non-buying seasons.

Taking a two mile radius from downtown Austin, we show the average-discount-from-list-price ratio of sale price to list price (subtract from 1 to get the discount) for real estate sold in June and December. The data is obtained from the MLS and goes back to 2004.  On average, since 2005, you can buy central Austin property for less in December than you can in June.  Last year if you purchased in December then you saved an additional 3% from asking price.

I call it the “December Discount”.

This chart affirms, at least in part, that in recent years buyers purchasing in the “off season” are getting slightly better deals than buyers in spring and summer.  Since 2005 you can see the December Discount increasing with each year.  With the FHA loans currently filling a void in the credit markets, and a tax incentive bringing more buyers to the table, this year we might not see a continued divergence beyond 3%.

Downtown Austin Open Houses

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(Looking for this week’s open houses? You’ll find them here.)

downtown-austin-open-house

Open houses in downtown Austin for Sunday, November 22nd

The great thing about downtown Austin open houses is that you can generally walk from building to building. Take a stroll downtown now that summer is over and the temperature is cooler. If you’re into adaptive reuses of older buildings, checkout DAB’s list of downtown Austin lofts. Looking for FHA approved condos? We’ve got the info here.

This weekend you can browse at your own pace at the Milago (btw, have you visited Rainey Street recently?), Spring, and the Austonian sales center.  While you’re here, checkout DAB’s gift suggestions found on 2nd Street.

Sunday
1) 54 Rainey St #1014, 2bd, 2ba, $469,000, 1-4pm [Housepad] map
2) 300 Bowie St, Spring sales center, model units, 1-5pm map website
3) 200 Congress Ave, Austonian sales center located at 300 W 6th, 12-5pm map website

Don’t see the properties you’re interested in? Ask a Realtor who lives and works in downtown Austin.