Let’s get over to the last part of the show. So, let’s talk about Austin. I’ve been having the heat on Austin, because, and largely because, it’s just a lot of Californians going over to Austin. It’s a lot of Californians going over to Austin, and I don’t understand it. Well, I do understand it. I do understand it. Y’all want to make Austin like California. And you know who I feel sorry for the most? Texans. I do. I do. I feel sorry for Texans in general, because I see Texas eventually, going blue. May not happen within the next eight years.

It may take 12 to 16 years, but as more people, it’s a language app. All right, I’m gonna have to check it out. My Spanish is terrible. My Espanol is terrible. It’s okay. It’s all right. You know what they do understand? Mula, baby. You pull out that mula. Oh, oh, oh, señor, señor. Yes, yes. Si, si, si señor. Gracias, gracias, gracias. But as more people leave California and sell their homes and try to avoid the rich tax and the mansion tax and all of that stuff, right? They’re coming to y’all more than, listen, when I see new home in Texas, new home in Texas, new home in Texas, new home in Texas, move to Texas, move to Texas, move to Texas, Austin, Houston, Dallas, Fort Worth, move to this weird suburban Texas.

They are absolutely going to turn Texas blue. I believe it in my soul. See, the one thing that y’all got wrong over in Texas is that y’all think that y’all are too big to fail. You’re disillusioned right now. You’re confused because you think that, no, they’re not going to do that over here. The chef is the one that controls things. Okay. All right. See what’s happening in Houston. They said they broke. Dallas, sassy. Austin is just basically California. That’s all Austin is. Austin is California. And so y’all arrogant right now. You hardy.

You hardy. You think that you can’t get touched. It’s impossible for them to turn your red to blue. Put enough black in it, put enough yellow in it, put a little purple in it, put a little rainbow in it. Guess what you’re going to have? California. I think that Gavin Newsom should run for governor over there in Texas one day. We’ll get there. We’ll get there. Make sure y’all hit a like for the algorithm. Subscribe to the channel, turn on your notifications. If you have not already, make sure you tap into the Patreon.

Link is in the description. Let’s get to it. The latest inflation numbers show that nationwide rents have cooled from historic highs, but it’s not reaching every rental market or every renter. Austin, Texas is one of the places where rents are showing a downward trend, but lower income families there say their rents are often staying the same or even going up. Blair Walton and Alexa of Austin PBS tells us who’s getting a deal on the Texas Capitol and who’s not. It’s coming in. Marilu Jaime’s had achieved that rare dream in Austin, finding an apartment that was close to everything she needed.

It was close to the library, close to the grocery store, close to my daughter’s school, also from work. It was the best. I was close to everything. Now I feel like I’m going to use a lot of gas. She’s worried about burning gas because soon she will be moving about 45 minutes outside of town. She’s leaving because her rent’s gone up and she can’t afford to stay. Hey, remember when the American dream used to be to buy a house? Remember when the American dream used to be to buy a house now? Do you know what the American dream is? You know what the American dream is? The American dream is to just find a place that’s reasonable to rent.

You got it right. Affordable rent. We have become such a nation that is broken and don’t have any kind of understanding of financial literacy or what we was getting ourselves into and the way that we voted, that we’ve now reduced ourselves to getting affordable rent, just having a place to lay your head at night. That’s what we’ve reduced ourselves to. Yes, we did. Affordable rent. Affordable rent. I used to pay $1,040 and suddenly that was raised to $1,530. It doesn’t seem fair to me that after so many years they simply raised the rent so much that we have no other option but to leave this place.

But reports show that rents are going down in Austin. A study by Rent.com showed rents dipping more than 12% year over year. Yes, it’s not all bad. Jake Wegman is an associate professor in the community regional planning program at the University of Texas. We were flooded with headlines about how all of America was moving to Austin and developers responded to that. So Austin’s population increased, especially during the pandemic, about 6% between 2020 and 2022. And demand for housing increased as well. This drew a lot of developers to build apartments and maybe, as it turned out, too many apartments.

I hate these cookie cutter apartments that they got. It’s almost like these cookie cutter neighborhoods where they don’t nobody have any character. I personally, and this is just in my opinion, and I actually got a video that I got coming out in the Patreon where I talk about taxes and a little bit more real estate and what to look for, what not to look for. One of the things, I’ll give you a little bit of insight, one of the things that I always say is stay away from condos. Stay away from condos.

My number, one of my number one things, well, the number one thing is always make sure you stay away from the hood in general. But one of my number one things is to stay away from condos. Stay away from HOA fees, stay away from condos. They don’t appreciate at the same rate a single family homes that’s in a decent neighborhood that also have great schools. Stay away from, especially these cookie cutter property management, BlackRock owned. Throw them up in five minute condos, bro. They all look just like this. All across America, no matter what city you in, no matter what state you in, this is one of the things that I hate.

I hate these cookie cutter, throw a couple amenities, throw a gym in there and think that you good condos. I think that these are absolute trash. Just see so many of them and they just so overpriced. One report showed that as of last fall, almost 20,000 more multifamily units were delivered than released and it’s got some landlords offering deals. And it’s nothing wrong. And I’m not saying anything is wrong with apartments. I’m saying that when they look like these cookie cutter apartments, they all look the same with no character. I just don’t like it because I’m a fan of architecture.

So it’s a little different for me. Maybe two years ago, I feel like they were jostling for an apartment and now the landlord is saying, hey, you know, like if you sign this this 12 month lease, then I’ll give you a month or more of free rent. So I would say the biggest thing has been rent increases. And we’re seeing that throughout Austin and a lot of low income housing property specifically. Piesma Rivera is an outreach specialist with Bosto, a group that works with low income renters like Jaime’s. She says they see residents struggling with a very tight housing market.

We do have a lot of folks that are saying there’s no housing I can find that’s within my range that I can afford right now. And so they’re definitely moving to the outskirts of Austin, which is really, really hard. That’s the challenge Jaime’s found herself in. I love condos to rent. I don’t love condos to own. I love condos to rent. So meaning that like I like apartment buildings, I like condos, I like all of that. I like them to rent out. I don’t like them to own. I don’t. As an owner, even if I’m renting it out to somebody else, and I’m talking about I like them to rent out for me, like they’re convenient.

I don’t have to worry about no maintenance, any stuff like lifestyle, it makes sense. But to own it, I think that it’s a bad idea. And like I said, I dig into that in a Patreon video, and we can debate about it. Well, I thought about moving and that’s what I’m going to do because I have no other option. It’s too much money. I can’t pay it because I can’t pay so much rent alone. So if there are all of these new apartments, they all look the same. They all look the same. Cookie cutter, dome up on every block, concentrate the population.

They all look the same. And then they throw some contrasting colors, white with the gray and all of that. And it’s just it’s the same, bro. Lower income families find a place to stay. Most of our newer housing remains unaffordable if it’s market rate. Of course, if we create a business heart is with Housing Works Austin. And he says part of the problem with a lot of these new buildings, they’re aimed at high income earners nationwide. Eighty nine percent of new apartments built in the last couple of years were considered high end.

They’re also the ones getting deals on rent. One report showed that in Texas cities, luxury apartments saw bigger price drops than middle tier rentals. What we’re seeing in terms of construction of housing is we’re seeing, of course, some more higher end apartments being built while they selling them to institutional investors. So, for example, what’s basically happening in the market today is the reason why you see so many of these places going up all across the country is because the developers are making a killing off of developing these apartment buildings or these condos or whatever, because what happens is once they fill them up and once you get it past a certain threshold, as far as the percentages and vacancy rates, then it makes it much more attractive to be able to offload the entire property in which they make basically millions of dollars because of the cost and the risk of developing it.

But then being able to pass it over into an institutional buyer, which that’s when you start to see the property management change over. Once they meet a certain threshold of how many people that they get inside of the building, the value of the property goes up and then makes it more marketable. They sell it over into an institutional investor that’s trying to basically figure out some places, deploy money in order to have a stable, great return on whatever their investment is. And that’s how they make money. It’s all a cycle. And so, basically, a lot of these developers are incentivized to continue to throw the money up because they’re working for the quick cash, which they’re making a whole lot of, instead of being more focused on caring about the community.

And this is why you need people like me. This is why you need people that are business holders or people that want to develop the community or the people that’s not price gouging. It’s just so few of us because there’s so many people that’s just putting money above community. And I think that you can do both. I think that you could be profitable. You can make a decent amount of money while at the same time serving the community and adding value to it and continuing to grow the community and making it a productive place for people to live, work, and play.

You know what I’m saying? But they incentivize to do it because institutional investors are buying them out. And so, if they hold on for a little bit, even if they don’t fully rent it out, they’ll be able to pass that cost over and they’ll make a whole bunch of money as a result of it. But it’s a bubble. It is absolutely a bubble. At the same time, this gap between housing costs and the gap between income has been growing for over a decade in Austin and other parts of the nation. This earning gap didn’t just increase the going rate for housing in Austin.

It also skewed a number that has a big impact on low-income housing, median family income, or MFI, sometimes referred to as the AMI or average median income. And this is what’s happening, right? Throughout all of this, as we see this and we learn more about money and finances and resources and stuff, you know what’s happening? The regular everyday person is being priced out. And this is why I say the middle class is going away. Because when you combine greed with institutional investors, also with cookie cutter, no quality, no sense of community, no understanding and no standards from legislators and they just throwing these communities up as fast as possible in order to create a bigger tax base, it’s so that they can fill the holes within their budgets.

What you basically have is an erosion of the middle class because nobody is actually paying attention to the people that’s being priced out. That’s why you have so many migrants coming into this country. Because you can’t even afford to live in the places that you want to work in. You can’t afford to live in the Wyoming’s. You can’t afford to live in Boise. You can’t really afford to live close to where you live. And so that also incentivizes the auto manufacturing companies to make more cars because you’re going to say, well, I need to get back and forth to work every day.

And we don’t have a great mass transportation system in the United States of America. It’s all one circle. It’s a circle jerk. I mean, honestly, in reality, it’s a circle jerk. And so the way that they also, let me tell you what the cherry on top. Let me tell you the cherry on top, right? The cherry on top is then to distract you with thinking that it’s a systematic racism issue. It’s easy to distract you from the class, class issues and a class war when you can focus on race and you can focus on discrimination against gay people, or you can focus on being distracted with abortion laws, and you can focus on whether or not you like this person or whatever.

It’s so easy to distract you from what’s really happening and what’s going to affect your family. And so instead of you voting on policy, you vote on politics and identity politics. You say, well, I’m gonna vote for this person because I don’t like that person instead of paying attention to what’s in your best interest as an individual and what’s gonna affect your family. It’s one big circle jerk. It’s one big circle jerk. And then you roll the dice. Now, 100,000 is really 50,000 and inflation is out of control. You can’t afford to live.

And now y’all gotta get married and shack up in order for you to even survive. Otherwise, you can go and live van life. Or you can join the bag chasers and learn how to get this bag and capitalize off of the circle jerk. That’s the other option that you have. [tr:trw].

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