“I can tell you for certain that Austin, Texas is in the vanguard of the national housing discussion and cities all over this country right now have been looking to us for ideas about how they address their own affordability challenges. Boston, Philadelphia, Dallas, San Antonio have all reached out asking in one form of this question or another, ‘how the hell are you doing this?’”
That is Austin Mayor Kirk Watson speaking at a regional housing conference last week. No one at the Austin Independent was there, but we learned about it from KXAN, one of our favorite and most respected local news outlets.
It’s not clear here whether Watson was saying that other cities are asking how Austin is managing to pass such a huge slew of zoning and housing code changes with unwavering supermajorities; or if he was maintaining that cities are calling to ask how Austin is achieving virtually miraculous drops in housing prices.
The first thing is indisputably true. On the second it is, in the most kind interpretation, too early to tell.
We do know how KXAN reporter Grace Reader interpreted Watson’s excitement. Right after the Watson clip, which began her story, she played a recent clip of Vice President J.D. Vance invoking Austin housing policies in a speech to the National League of Cities (something we discussed here). In the clip Vance talks about how a “massive increase” of people moving to Austin and how prices “skyrocketed.” But, then, continues Vance, Austin “implemented some pretty smart policies and that brought down the cost of housing.”
Reader then reports that “as of February the median home sale price for the Austin metro was down 3.9% year over year.” Next, Reader listed some of the major changes that the City Council has made to the Land Development Code, including the HOME initiative Part 1 in December 2023 — the turning point in this saga according to the estimation of virtually everyone on all sides of this issue.
One could watch this report and easily conclude that median home prices have dropped within the City of Austin since the Council began passing major changes to the City’s Land Development Code and zoning policies.
The 3.9% drop in the median home sale price is an accurate number, for the metro area, according to the Austin Board of Realtors, who pointed out that the data comes from Unlock MLS. Note however, that Reader reports that the 3.9% decrease is for the metro area. That not only includes the Austin city limits, but also all of Williamson, Hays, Bastrop and Caldwell Counties. Figures for the metro area are much easier to obtain than specifically for the City of Austin, as we have noted here before.
It turns out that a few days earlier KXAN ran another story on Austin housing that featured a chart on median home prices using Unlock MLS data.
Close examination of that chart reveals data inconsistent with the impression Reader left with viewers. This was on a chart which provided “Median House Prices Austin-Round Rock Metro” area. The chart provided monthly median prices since January 2019 for each of the five counties comprising the Austin-Round Rock metro area. (The five counties are Travis, Williamson, Hays, Bastrop and Caldwell.) Even more helpfully, the chart provided figures specifically for sales within the City limits of Austin.
Here are a few of the findings:
- Median home prices within the Austin city limits actually went up, by 3.8%, during the same February 2024 to February 2025 period where Reader accurately reported that median home sale prices in the Austin metro area decreased by 3.9%.
- The actual figures for Austin (inside the City limits) median sale price went from $543,200 in February 2024 to $564,000 a year later.
- In other words the median price increased in the area governed by City ordinances and codes, the area subject to the changes made by the Austin City Council. At the same time median home sale prices decreased in the five-county metro area, which includes Austin.
- That’s right. Median sale prices went up in the area governed by the new Austin regulations, or deregulations, and down in the areas where these rules do not apply. The difference is even more dramatic than it might appear since the metro area achieved the 3.9% drop in prices despite including the Austin city limits data, where prices increased.
That’s right. Median sale prices went up in the area governed by the new Austin regulations, or deregulations, and down in the areas where these rules do not apply.
For the record, the median home sale price by county, from February 2024 to February 2025 were:
- Travis – $515,000 in February 2025, a rise of 3%:
- Williamson – $415,000, down 1.8%
- Hays – $359,000, down 6.4%
- Bastrop – $356,214, up 1.2% and
- Caldwell – $276,990, down 7.6%
Just to be clear I’m not saying that this means that the new Council measures have failed or are not working. I am saying that the data cited above shows that HOME is not actually lowering prices already. That could happen, but it hasn’t happened yet. So when Watson celebrates like he did at the housing conference the other day, he’s doing an end zone dance close to his own 20-yard line.
But, very few people notice things like that (except in football), making it easier for Watson to celebrate.
The Making of a Herd Mentality
To me this is all reflective of core problems within our public discourse. It’s all about your team winning the argument, scoring rhetorical points; not about the actual people affected by the policy; in this specific case, not about whether HOME is actually lowering the costs that people have to pay for housing in Austin. In the case of Austin national journalists like Ezra Klein and Jennifer Ludden began citing Austin as a place where a lot of housing was getting built; although neither cited HOME or other Council initiatives. Then J.D. Vance weighed in. By then a full herd mentality had taken hold.
I think the Mayor and Council probably sincerely want to lower housing prices for people. But, if they are really serious about it, they need to have accurate and adequate data. Only with accurate and thorough data can they determine if their policies are actually working as they intended. With accurate data Council Members could evaluate what appears to be working and what appears to not be working. Then they could adjust policies as they deem necessary.
That’s not near as much fun though as just repeating talking points over and over and getting really excited, and convinced of their success — especially when those talking points get picked up nationally. Getting your talking points picked up nationally can be considered a political success, but it does not lower housing prices for anybody.
A Reporting Dilemma
I want to note that this story presented a dilemma for me. I was very skeptical of the HOME initiative on a number of fronts. I strive, however, to acknowledge it if a policy or program of which I was critical is working. At the same time I feel a responsibility to report factually and to dig beneath the herd mentality of any particular moment. I sought to balance all that in reporting this story. From the data here I think it is clear that it is far too early to declare HOME and other Council initiatives a success at driving down housing prices. If that situation changes I will report that too.
I also don’t mean to be critical of Grace Reader or at least not overly so. I respect her as a reporter and have utilized her reporting in other stories that I have done. She also has more frequent deadlines than I do. Nonetheless I felt like it was important to point out that prices within the Austin city limits went up even as she reported that prices in the metro area went down, and left the impression that that was a result of Council policies.
I also want to note how Kirk Watson is slicker and more clever than his colleagues. For instance we have lampooned Chito Vela here for wildly claiming that HOME has driven housing prices down even though only three houses have been built under HOME regulations; and for saying that for two “decades” Austin leaders worked from a “premise” to “not allow new construction” — even though Austin was a national leader in the number of building permits issued during much of that time.
Meanwhile Watson makes sweeping statements about Austin being “in the vanguard” and about cities from all over the country contacting Austin to ask “how the hell are you doing this,” — evidently without making clear exactly what “this” is. But, somehow a good reporter got the idea that the Mayor was referring to prices and ran with it. Go figure.
Stay Away from Teslas
Adela and I went to the Hands Off rally at the Capitol on April 5. We also got there for part of the rally for public schools. That meant some cars from the first rally were leaving as we arrived. Thus, we managed to get a parking place on San Jacinto really close to the Capitol.
We got a space right behind a Tesla sedan. It had a bumper sticker which read “I Bought This Before Elon Went Crazy.” The owner happened to come back to her Tesla just as we were feeding the meter. She wasn’t leaving. She told us that she was swapping out signs for the second rally. In other words she appeared to be a really solid Austin left winger.
A Tesla parked near the Capitol while the owner attends two Saturday April 5 rallies. Photo by Adela Mancías. The photo was cropped to take out the license plate.
I relate this to reiterate something I said previously: Please don’t deface or damage a vehicle simply because it is a Tesla. There haven’t been any reports about this happening locally, not that I have seen. So, please, let’s keep it that way.
I am not in favor of any political violence, including damaging Teslas on Tesla property. But, damaging an already owned Tesla seems particularly crazed and counter productive. Someone paid for that with their own money. And, like the woman we met at the Capitol, they probably did so as a way to lower their own carbon footprint and to fight against climate change; in other words to back policies that the left favors.
Don’t take any of this as a defense of Elon Musk. To me his leadership of DOGE is the most vivid example yet of how the distribution of wealth is the most fundamental problem facing our country. I mean here is the richest person in the world slashing federal workers and federal programs — ruining lives — based on his own prejudices with seemingly little, if any, analysis of what the workers and programs actually do. It’s beyond disgusting and beyond tragic. But, life is complicated.
For instance, to reiterate another point I made previously, even if right wingers start buying Teslas (doubtful in my opinion) because they like Elon Musk so much, each sale will still be progress on climate change. That doesn’t necessarily mean that boycotting Tesla is a bad strategy. It is just another factor in the equation.
A Note on the Publication Schedule
Readers may have noticed that the Austin Independent’s publishing pace has been a little slower than usual this year. That’s primarily because I am working on some deeply researched stories that focus on how Austin got into the situation it is in and the challenges that we are currently facing. These will end up being a series of stories in most cases.
So, at this point, I am going to concentrate on those more deep dive stories and not publish others for a few weeks. I may divert from that if a crucial issue arises. But, don’t be surprised if you don’t hear from us for a few weeks. We will make up for it later.
This story was amended to note that data cited by the Austin Independent and earlier by KXAN comes from Unlock MLS rather than the Austin Board of Realtors.
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