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Comment by etchalon | Hacker News Reader

I'm not sure why they think Austin is less NIMBY. That hasn't been my experience.

It may be as NIMBY in some ways but the effects haven't kicked in yet (and probably won't given size, competition, and property tax laws). Look at the options available for a family making 80k in these two cities. They aren't even the same magnitude.

https://www.trulia.com/TX/Austin/

https://www.trulia.com/CA/Palo_Alto/

Texas also doesnt have prop 13 so it is unlikely to ever reach the levels of a California city

That comparison is ridiculous, have you been to Palo Alto? It's a mansion neighborhood like Atherton. A better comparison would be with San Jose or San Mateo that are like, normal cities. Still way more expensive than Austin but it's nowhere near the price of Palo Alto or Atherton.

I live in Palo Alto and love zillowing random houses on my walk to Starbucks. Record for most expensive town house on a normal residential street is $19m. It’s insane.

Zillow and Redfin and trulia estimated values are clickbait. Only look at recent sale prices and comp sales.

https://www.trulia.com/for_sale/San_Mateo,CA/

I think that's fair but the nonetheless the only houses on here in San Mateo for under 600k are about 600sq ft. Even 1200sqft homes are 1M+ Where do you think married mid-level engineers are going to live?

For 500k in Austin you can choose between brand new 1300 sqft homes or older 2500 sqft homes.

You have to go well east of San Jose in order to find what I would call a “normal” city in the Bay Area.

More conservative areas -- and Austin is more conservative than the bay area, even if it's relatively blue for Texas -- tend to at least allow building more housing outward, even if they don't allow building more densely in already-developed areas.

In 2019, San Francisco housing grew in total by 4,850 units, which was an increase of 81%! over 2018.

By comparison, Austin permitted 8600 multi-family units in 2018 alone. That doesn't include single family detached, which averages another 2800 a year.

San Francisco != the whole of the Bay Area.

They’re right proper nutcase looney tunes in San Francisco, when it comes to new building. Almost as bad as they are here.

Well, that is unless you’re building high rises on the river for the millionaires and billionaires. Then you can build as many of those as you want.

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