If you are looking to buy or sell a home in Central Texas, contact me via email or at 512-650-7300. If you prefer to read instead of watch, here are the chart and transcript ..read more

What makes a good inspector?  Over the years, I’ve worked with many home inspectors and seen a boatload of inspection reports.  I think the best inspectors are neutral parties who simply report what they find.  Obviously, they also need to be more than competent in their field.  I know some of the inspectors I refer to my clients have found things that I believe others would miss – and that just comes from experience.  You also want an inspector who can properly set expectations.  A good inspector will interpret the report so the buyer understands what items are i ..read more

If you are looking to buy or sell a home in Steiner Ranch, contact me via email or at 512-650-7300. Previous editions of How’s the Market in Steiner Ranch are also available.  If you prefer to read instead of watch, here are the chart and transcript ..read more

Property tax appraisals are now available. Both Travis and Williamson Counties have released most of their 2024 values.  In Travis County, the average single-family residence saw a decline of 7%, but that’s just an average.  Having taken a cursory look through, I can assure you that many homes saw increased values this year.  Williamson County has not released any information on the aggregate values in their county.  The deadline to protest for both counties is May 15th this year.  That’s earlier than past years so let me repeat that the deadline to protest is May 15th ..read more

Squatters are back!  Over the past year, I’ve talked several times about the growing problem of squatters.  And it seems the news is full of stories about squatters over the past few weeks.  Florida recently enacted new laws that go into effect this summer making it much easier for homeowners to get rid of them.  Georgia has a bill headed to the governor’s desk and Alabama is moving a bill through their legislature.  My guess is that you’ll start to see more states look at new legislation as we continue to hear such egregious stories about what are clearly thieves taki ..read more

Not so fast to the 5s!  Much of the housing industry has been expecting rates to drop below 6%.  In late 2023, many expected it by spring.  Then they changed it to the second half of the year.  Now the economists at Fannie Mae don’t think we’ll get into the 5s at all this year as they’ve revised their guidance to expect mortgage rates at 6.4% by year’s end.  In my monthly market reports, I’ve been doubting rates below 6% for quite a while.  Inflation remains too high for the Fed to bring down the Fed Funds rate, which is not the same as mortgage interest rates, bu ..read more

Austin has a lot of millionaires.  Over the past ten years, the number of millionaires living in Austin has more than doubled to around 32,700.  According to the 2024 USA Wealth Report, we’ve seen the largest percentage increase of millionaires than any other city in the US.  In terms of ranking, Austin is #10 in the country.  In Texas, Houston leads with almost 91,000 and Dallas has over 68,000.  Given the growth of Austin over the past ten years, especially in tech, these numbers shouldn’t surprise anyone.  But there is something I found very interesting.  ..read more

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Don’t believe everything you hear.  If you’ve seen anything in the news about the National Association of Realtors settling a lawsuit, you probably heard a few things that aren’t true.  Any article you read or video you watch that tells you how things are going to shake out from this are definitely speculating.  There are so many facets to it, that no one can accurately say how the residential real estate business is going to change.  I can layout several paths that this could take, but they all differ based on various potential courses of action.  Some paths lead us d ..read more

I’m dropping some numbers.  I’m going from 1835 Realty to a new company named Fiv Realty.  It’s a relatively new brokerage operating in about a dozen states and last week I helped open it up right here in Texas.  I was the first agent in Austin and look forward to growing our presence here.  My clients won’t notice much difference because they’ll still work directly with me and have the benefit of my almost 25 years of experience and expertise.  While I enjoyed having my own brokerage, a great agent I’ve known for years started Fiv Realty recently and I just had to bec ..read more