austin towers and high rises

BREAKING: Sales Of New Downtown Austin Condos Average More Than $1,000,000

Jude Galligan | January 8, 2013 |

For the first time, the average sales price of a new condo in downtown Austin is more than $1,000,000.

It’s not news that residences cost more than $1,000,000. It is news when we’re talking about averages! To be clear, we are focusing on new construction only, not resales (which have also had a banner year, and we’ll cover that in a future post.)

In 2012, the Austonian, Four Seasons Residences, W Hotel Residences, and Spring Condos (which in 2012 closed out their sales), accounted for 124 sales.

According to builder reports assembled by Capitol Market Research for new construction condos sold during the past 12 months:

average price = $1,061,682
average size = 1,701 ft.
number new condos sold = 124

The data is provided to us monthly as an aggregate of the above four buildings. Anonymizing individual building sales was the only way to convince the developers to share their sales data. To qualify the average price, we can approximate a median price using the 12 monthly aggregate records we have.

median monthly average price = $1,044,181 (min $777,813 to max $1,687,857)

The refrain which began in 2010 continues: there are no new downtown Austin condos being built. Nor have we seen any new site plans for downtown condos. Inventories continue to decrease (by 124 units in 2012) and residences are selling quickly at prices close to the asking price. An ancillary effect of this shrinking inventory is rising prices for resales.

By my estimation, when compared against TCAD records, only 115 new construction units remain. If interest rates remain low, the downtown Austin real estate market is on a trajectory to complete sales of new construction condos in 2013.

I’ll continue to provide detailed analysis of 2012 results over the coming weeks, including resales and analysis of building-by-building performance.

-Jude

This Hotel Looks Just Like That Hotel

Jude Galligan | January 3, 2013 |

It’s deja vu all over again!

White Lodging is losing no time getting to work on their third active hotel construction project in downtown Austin.

In late December, about three months after news leaked about the deal, planners filed a site plan and based on other documents filed at the city a clearer picture is emerging about the 300-room luxury hotel at 5th & San Jacinto, abutting the 6th Street Entertainment District.

According to city documents, the project will climb to about 20 floors, with a roof terrace, totaling 215,000 square feet.

Atlanta-based PFVS Architects Inc. are the architects of record. PFVS already has a few hotels in Austin with their stamp on them, including the Westin at the Domain and the Marriot South Austin, off of I-35. PFVS is also designing White Lodging’s other two current downtown projects. White Lodging broke ground on a JW Marriott convention hotel valued at $300 million across from the Austonian last year, which is expected to open in 2015, and is working on a 296-room Hyatt Place under construction at 3rd & San Jacinto, expected to open this year. (Note: White Lodging also runs the Residence Inn next to the Convention Center.)

What is a bit surprising is how eerily similar drawings of PFVS’s Hyatt Place project, on 3rd and San Jacinto, appears to the renderings submitted to the city for the other hotel on 5th and San Jacinto, two blocks north. They are both about 300 rooms, and though the final products will probably be different, on the drawing board there is no denying they look quite similar.

: Where have I seen this rendering before?

The 5^th Street project comes to us from no other than Harry Whittington, who in this case created a joint venture with REI Real Estate Services LLC in Carmel, Ind., and White Lodging.

Whittington told the Austin Business Journal that after being courted by many developers his family concluded that building a hotel with the veteran hospitality developers was the route to pursue. (Whittington owned the lot for a whopping 45 years and is not in the business of selling his land.)

The site had entitlements for an 8:1 floor to area ratio, and zoning was successfully changed to provide a 13:1 FAR.

Something else lacking in the design are renderings that show the the building with a 6th Street POV – arguably the most important perspective for this hotel to blend into the neighborhood fabric. Will it be a giant Plaza Lofts style flat blank wall looming over 6th Street? I know the developer has heard these concerns, but we are left wondering about the results.

Should we expect more thoughtful design from architects and developers? Absolutely.

Is this hotel better than the suface lot it’s going to replace? Absolutely.

Marathon Planning Effort Pays Off: 7 Rio Site Plan Permitted, Awaiting Construction

Jude Galligan | December 20, 2012 |

An Englishman once said: “You can’t always get what you want, but if you try sometimes, well you just might find you get what you need.”

And so it was for the folks behind a tower planned at Seventh & Rio Grande, named 7 Rio, who this month saw the City of Austin approve a site plan, allowing construction to move forward.

It was exactly one year ago that DAB posted that the 7 Rio apartments still had legs.

The project was one of a handful of [for sale] condo projects that took a back seat when lenders got squeamish in the midst of the Great Recession. In 2008, on the eve of the housing-crisis fallout, the builders projected a 3Q08 groundbreaking on a 34-story luxury residential 158-unit “point-tower” building.

That vision has been scaled back, and what is coming is a shorter building, with 24-stories, but packing in about 70 more apartments [for rent].

7rio-austin-site-rendering — original rendering of 7rio has since been scaled back

Part of the site is in the Capitol View Corridor, but a point-tower over podium design could have gone up as high as 50 stories. Given that demand remains so high for units in the urban core, this feels like a bit of a missed opportunity for CWS Capital Partners – the Orange County, California based developer – to create something striking, and the Austin community to reap some additional property tax and density.

One other observations is that the current site plan application says only “residential & parking,” while the initial proposal included 7,300 square feet of retail space.

I’m just hoping CWS doesn’t sacrifice developing an inviting, pedestrian/shopper friendly building, for something barren of storefronts.

It is nice to see a project developed by a great local architect Brett Rhode getting off the ground, and we’ll all accept that the client calls the shots. (Note: Rhode: Partners portfolio still shows specs for the first design.)

What’s Missing? Clues To Downtown Austin’s Next Apartment Tower

Jude Galligan | December 18, 2012 |

What’s missing is a clue to what might become downtown Austin’s next apartment high-rise.

Back in August we discovered the old warehouse on the corner of Trinity and Cesar Chavez had been acquired by World Class Capital Group, and quickly conceptualized into an apartment tower, with the working name of Trinity Place.

For decades, two small billboards stood at the eastern edge of the lot. If you were heading east or west on Cesar Chavez you wouldn’t have missed them. As of this week, those billboards have been taken down!

Now, WCCG would not decide to forfeit that steady billboard lease without a good reason. I speculate this is a signal that development efforts are progressing.

trinity_place_conceptual — Trinity Place conceptual footprint – Cesar Chavez @ Trinty (pdf)

87 Rainey Street Downtown Austin Update: NO VA (not NOVA) to Open End of 2012 (Hopefully).

AG | November 5, 2012 |

UPDATE 8/31/2013: No Va is OPEN for Business! Check out pics and my review HERE.

UPDATE 7/1/2013: Just got a note from Brad Sorenson with an update on what is going on with NO VA –

Things are getting really close now. Construction is pretty close to complete with inspections taking place and little odds and ends being finished. I have started hiring for the kitchen and we should be training with in a couple weeks. I don’t want to make a guess on when an opening date will be until we have set it in stone on our end.

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Remember that mega post I did on what’s happening on Rainey Street? In the post, I talked about 87 Rainey Street located in the Rainey Street District of Downtown Austin, and how I had not heard any updates on just what exactly was going on in that space. Well, that must have hit Brad Sorenson‘s (the head chef of the new concept, perhaps more widely known for his stint on The Next Food Network’s Star) Google Alerts, because he promptly posted a comment on the Blog saying things were still a go for the restaurant concept.

Which was great, but I wanted more info – so I emailed him and asked if we could meet. I was actually very surprised when he said okay.

So we met. Last week. And, let me just say this – the guy OOZES affability. He’s also real, real tall.

I was absolutely charmed, I will admit – but not only by him as a person, but also by what he told me about NO VA.

First off, NO VA is the name (there’s a space in between “O” and “V”, 2 words), not NOVA, as it’s previously been reported. There’s actually a cute little story behind the name, too, Brad tells me. “No va” is what the owner of the business said when he looked at the house at 87 Rainey Street when he initially purchased it, in late 2009. He said “No va”, because, at the time, [Read more…] about 87 Rainey Street Downtown Austin Update: NO VA (not NOVA) to Open End of 2012 (Hopefully).