North Lamar/Burnet Development Thread

[wwmiv]

I'm old Austin. Don't tar us all with the same brush.

That said:

There's a big difference between "desirable" versus "transitioning" both placed in distinction from "downscale" (or whatever other less polite word you want to choose), "new build", and "eclectic" neighborhoods for the purposes of the real estate market.

IMHO: the general pattern outside of neighborhoods platted for one-off custom built homes for the wealthy is: largely similar tract housing built for the middle class ("new build"), fallen into disrepair due to deferred maintenance ("downscale"), targeted for gentrification by the wealthy due to centralized location ("transitioning"), and then gentrified to some degree or another ("gentrifying") until the low hanging fruit are gone and the action moves to another area ("eclectic" or "desirable" depending on the thoroughness of the gentrification***).

Highland is "transitioning", it is not yet "desirable" ... and probably never will be within any of our lifetimes, and is more likely to end up being "eclectic". Until (a) the transition within the Highland neighborhood proper (e.g. the single family home dominated portion) is further along (or even begins) and (b) neighboring neighborhoods St. Johns and Georgian Acres get better. The Highland Campus is wonderful and a great addition to the area, but it is less than 1/10th of the land area of the neighborhood and is relatively disconnected from the neighborhood itself, so the ongoing developments there aren't affecting the single family home core as much as anyone here is claiming. Rather, larger market forces forcing a change of demographics in the neighborhood is causing it to get cleaned up (see below). Furthermore, none of the south or east Austin neighborhoods any of you mention are truly "desirable" neighborhoods. They are "eclectic." They contain thorough mixes of housing typologies and price points, gentrification was not complete nor thorough.

This is fundamentally different than neighborhoods like Barton Hills, Rollingwood, and Tarrytown which have way more purchase on the term "desirable" than anything else in our inner core. Doesn't mean all the rest aren't wonderful places to live (in fact, I prefer them: I live in Hyde Park, which is "eclectic"). This is yet another example of how the terminology in our housing market has allowed popularity and marketing driven groupthink to raise prices beyond what is sustainable. It isn't a math problem, it's a cultural problem. You have to moor yourself to reality for prices to ever stabilize, which means accurately describing the product being sold rather than exaggerating beyond reason. Let's moor ourselves to reality and admit that Highland is not a "desirable" neighborhood. And just for good measure: it is surrounded on two sides by worse: St Johns and Georgian Acres, both of which are more interconnected to the core part of the Highland neighborhood (St. Johns between Guadalupe and Northcrest) than even the Highland ACC Campus that's within it. The Highland ACC Campus itself functions as its own separate neighborhood.

Edit: I'd even add another category which is: "cleaned up" (or cleaning up).

Neighborhoods that don't actually experience much construction or churn in the housing stock, but that nonetheless have un-deferred their maintenance. I'd wager that Highland actually qualifies for this category rather than "transitioning." How many tear downs are we seeing in Highland? Hardly any. In order for a neighborhood to qualify as transitioning there must be new housing stock replacing old. Highland is still near uniformly the same lower middle income tract housing it was originally built as. A good south Austin equivalent is East Congress. Same housing style, same price points, same vibe, being cleaned up, but not experiencing much transition of housing stock.

***Further edit: The big difference between these two is diversity of price points. Desirable neighborhoods are those where there are near-uniformly high price points with builds and finishes rationally supporting those prices points regardless of housing typology (which may or may not be diverse), whereas eclectic departs from that in one or more of the following ways: irrationally priced housing relative to the builds and finishes of the structures, diverse price points, builds, and finishes, and diverse housing typologies intermingling in close proximity. There isn't much of inner Austin that is actually, truly, verifiably, genuinely, 100%, legitimately desirable. There's a lot of 🞵🞵🞵🞵 that's being marketed as in a desirable neighborhood so they can achieve a higher price point and pocket the commission. Those two things are not the same.