If you've been wanting to move to Austin but the high cost of homes and apartments has been discouraging, there might be good news.
Real estate firms like Zillow, which closely watch city rental prices, are saying the cost of rent in Austin has been coming down for a number of months and is likely similar to, or even cheaper than, what you'd pay in Dallas for the same space and amenities.
After years of being a boomtown, the Austin real estate market has been cooling off for several months, not that you can tell by the backed-up I-35 traffic or the expensive downtown lofts.
But while the costs of Dallas and Austin rents may be about the same these days, it's not as though Dallas is suddenly a hotter rental market, according to Texas A&M University Real Estate Center Research Director Daniel Oney.
"Austin is still a little bit more expensive, but basically they've pulled even with each other, is what we would argue," Mr. Oney says.
"They've pretty dramatically over-built the market there, so what's happening is landlords are giving lots of concessions on rents and even having to lower the rents that they were asking."
Did you know there's been an informal rule of thumb about how many building apartments in cities? That's one of the problems Austin's facing now.
"Y'know, developers will build a new apartment building for every new home that goes up, and since COVID Austin's been building four apartments for each new resident."
Austin is known for being "Austin-tatious," but it could also be characterized these days as being over-ambitious, too.