From Bloomberg:
Plunging Home Prices, Fleeing Companies: Austin’s Glow Is Fading
Oracle Corp. is moving its headquarters out of the city. Tesla Inc. is pulling back after a rapid expansion. Almost a quarter of commercial office space is vacant, and nowhere in the country have residential real estate prices fallen further from their pandemic peak.
Austin, the cosmic cowboy paradise that became a Covid-era economic superstar as it lured Elon Musk and a host of California refugees with its low taxes and sunny weather, had become accustomed to a steady drumbeat of good news. But lately that’s changed. And on Tuesday, Larry Ellison announced that his software company will shift its headquarters from the Texas capital to Nashville, Tennessee. It was a brief marriage — Oracle only arrived in Austin in 2020 — but getting jilted is never easy.
“City Hall was as surprised as everyone else,” Mayor Kirk Watsonsaid in a statement.
But maybe he shouldn’t have been so shocked. Austin has been going so strong for so long that the tide was bound to turn.
After a 12-year streak as the fastest growing large metro area in the US, Austin lost that slot in 2023. An office glut has pushed the vacancy rate 5 percentage points higher than the US average, according to data from Colliers. Home prices have dropped 18% from the pandemic highs seen in May 2022, the most among the 50 largest US metro areas, Redfin data show. Even so, the city ranks as one of the least affordable housing markets.