I'd bet that Miami is just a few years ahead of it (entering serious decline) and within a decade Austin will be seen as an obvious-in-retrospect cautionary tale.
Austin population cratered and it still has not recovered to 2020 level. That's why the housing costs there decreased.
In other words: force citizens out of your city, and the price will fall.
You'll see that the ACS 1-year was not performed and released in 2020 due to data quality
2015: 931840
2016: 947897
2017: 950714
2018: 964243
2019: 979263
2020: 961855 (Decennial Census), 965,872 (ACS 5-year, not comparable to 1-year), 996369 (Austin City Demographer)
2021: 964000
2022: 975335
2023: 979700
2025: 1025668
In this case we have the property that 2021 onwards shows increase in ACS and that Austin Demographics shows increase from 2020 onwards but that there is difference between 2020 numbers between sources.
We also see that Austin Demographer has higher number in 2019 than ACS sample https://demographics-austin.hub.arcgis.com/documents/cf1519a...
This means it's probably not good idea to compare 2023 ACS number to 2020 Austin Demographer number. Fortunately, we have Austin Demographer number from 2019, 2020, and 2025. From all this, we can conclude that cratering hypothesis is likely false. We must conclude that following statement of yours is unlikely:
> Austin population cratered and it still has not recovered to 2020 level.
The purported 2025 number is actually: "Population for City of Austin Full and Limited Purpose Boundaries, 2023".
I indicated that the sources are different. And the conclusion at the very best is that Austin population had been flat for years. It's now growing back, and the prices will react with a lag of 2-3 years.
It is embarrassing to be this antagonistic when proven wrong. As the kids say these days: “take the L”.
There are no consistent sources for the 2019-2024 population due to the way demographics are counted, so they have to be mixed. But they still show _at_ _most_ a weak return to growth with _at_ _most_ modest increases over the peak 2019 population.
This absolutely supports my point that the reason for the property price drop in Austin was the population decrease in 2020, rather than anything to do with new construction.
And you didn't want to spend 10 seconds to look at that, and instead spammed the thread with AI slop which is demonstrably wrong.
Population has receded slightly in the last couple years in Austin proper, is still greater than 2020, and the metro area has not shrunk year over year at all, although growth has slowed.
Population by year:
2019: 978,763
2020 high estimate for Jan 1 (996,369) - https://austin.culturemap.com/news/city-life/01-15-20-austin...
2020: 961,855 (Census, low mark)
2023: 979,882
2024 (estimated high mark): 986,928
So yes, the population cratered from a high in early 2020. This brought down prices with a 2 year lag, as owners started to get rid of empty units. The prices will come right back up now, that the population is recovering.
A low-single-digit push to local burbs happened all over the country. "Austin" in the same way people discuss "Houston" or "Chicago" i.e. the local metro area has grown every year.
The suburbs migration IS the point. The suburbs are a superior model when it's made possible by de-urbanization of workplaces, and it shows. The price in the suburbs of Austin has been growing.