I’m dabbling with the idea of owning property. But this ain’t Detroit, where you can plop a dollar on a bank teller’s desk and call yourself a homeowner. (Mostly exaggerating.) This is Austin, where money is not used to buy property, just larger, sturdier cardboard boxes. Not only are property values exceedingly high, so are appreciation rates.
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10 to 20%! If a given area isn’t already too expensive for me to buy, it will be in 15 minutes.
The upside is it’s the only variable that makes property ownership even half sensible. The New York Times has an excellent widget to help visualise the rent vs. buy argument. Their default appreciation rate, 1%, makes any economic venture in Austin an instant failure. Jack it up to 20%, and the grey (rent) integrated area is engulfed by the tan (buy). With such polarised win or lose outcomes, is it any surprise we have so many homeless people and millionaires living in the same space?