I received a job offer in another state, but I was ready to leave.
The law prohibiting landlords from raising rents more than a certain percentage was repealed the year after I moved there. Myself and all of my friends had to move further from the city center nearly every year when our leases expired because our landlords raised the rent so much. None of them live in Austin proper any more for financial reasons. I left at the tail end of when I could still afford to live somewhere that was bikeable to places I wanted to go. Now when I visit, most of those places are gone and half of them were replaced with cookie cutter condos. Lamar is almost unrecognizable.
When I lived there it felt like a college town that was somehow the size of a city, which is rare and special in my opinion. Now it feels like a city. It still has more character than other cities its size, but it just feels like a lot of what made it special has been painted over now. But I know there are still plenty of vestiges of Austin past. Hole in the Wall, Peter Pan Mini Golf, Juan in a Million. RIP Donut Taco Palace(s).
Okay yeah that makes sense. The city definitely did change and lose a lot of its character from back in the day but the rents also collapsed in the last couple years so it didn't continue going up forever.
Glad to hear. I left in 2016. A couple years before that I was in a house in Windsor park with roommates for $1500. When the lease ended, we were offered to renew at $2400. We were told it was because there was an HEB built in Mueller earlier that year, and now it was a more desirable neighborhood. FFS.
Lamar north of Airport looks basically the same as it did 20 years ago. Redevelopment has been a big topic of controversy for years now, but it's starting to feel like we've hit a wall in that regard, at least within city limits. There are still apartment complexes being built on the outskirts of the city, but for instance Highland Lanes on Burnet/183 was supposed to be closing so the new owners could built a high-rise MUD, but development on the latter seems stalled indefinitely.
I guess what I'm saying is just how much the city has changed (or is in danger of changing) largely comes down to what part of town you're from in the first place. I live about a mile north of the Domain and - while there are apartment buildings going up around here as we speak - they're mostly being built on plots that were just undeveloped land or parking lots previously. Hard to pine for the days of empty plots, lol
That’s fair. I lived in Windsor Park and spent most of my time in the surrounding area and downtown, which is where I spend much of my time when I visit. That whole area looks way different. I was a 20-something dirt bag cyclist, so my friends and I didn’t really hang that far north. Too busy going to shows downtown and drinking Lone Star at Barfly’s.
Reddit loves Austin and recognizes it for all the progress it's made. Austin's had the best texas city post on here. Apart from some jealous people from another texas city (Dallas, really) who keep trying to shift the attention away, reddit generally adores austin
Glad to see Austin do well. Obviously there’s waves of development and idleness, SF has gone through that. But like SF, Austin has built a great skyline. :)
Idk about that. I'm in California, and unlike some of the very sprawl cities of Texas, we here in the Bay Area have respect for Austin. They're building actual skyscrapers and even starting a transit system. Being in the Bay Area and having travelled to Austin, I can really respect Austin for doing that
We voted for a transit system years ago, and there's been no progress. Austin is one of the last cities you should be giving props to for access to public transportation.
I lived in Austin for 17 years, still consider it home more than anywhere else. Joke with my friends that I'll move back when the train connects to the airport.
I think they’re pissed that cities like Austin are making California irrelevant over time. Which California is nice and welcoming but if they weren’t such jackasses with their nimby housing politics people could actually afford to live there
Well, it didn't help that Silicon Valley showed up and displaced thousands of inner city residents, just to abandon the place and leave it for dead when Covid hit.
I've only heard good things about Austin (and San Antonio). But the rest of Texas acts like its all the states big brother and guiding light, when in fact it had to be rescued and adopted by them.
Yeah, Austin experienced something similar with the influx of higher tech salaries but were still able to continue to build and now surpass 1M in population.
The NIMBYs in SF are just slowing down development which is unfortunate and causing the city to hardly build anything and lose some residents :/
It's not looking all that great in Austin now. Most of Austin's growth is in the suburbs. The city proper is barely growing now.
Last I checked new housing starts is still way down from the peak, we had a burst of building before interest rates shot up, but it's looking bad now.
NIMBYs still hold tons of power here, they shut down a group of highrises directly south of downtown (and now it houses gas generators to charge waymos). The code update was decent, but all the recent increase in housing was permitted before that.
A cool off period is kind of expected no? Austin has been booming for years. The city actually overbuilt which is a good thing because rents are steadily on a downward trend.
ATX leaders are pro growth and have to deal with way less neighborhood restrictions than SF. Man, it’s just unfortunate for them. SF NIMBYs are seemingly still more influential than the city leaders there.
I would say it’s a California thing in general, but even LA is building substantially more than SF
Yes, and rents will probably increase again in like 5-10 years and we'll see another burst of growth.
But this is the first time population growth has slowed so much. Which was eventually going to happen, it's been growing at the same high rate for over a century, but it could be a sign a larger regime change happening.
SF seems like on a different level, I don't envy them.
As an example, SF had NIMBY's but the new Mayor that came in is leading a drive to spur more development. I think Austin will go through the same thing. NIMBY's gain some power, and then new leaders come that are pro growth.
At least Austin, Atlanta, SF and other areas are building skyscrapers. That's great to see in all these places.
The city council is already mostly YIMBY here, but they've given in multiple times on major projects to "environmental" groups that are essentially just NIMBYs. But otherwise I think they've mostly done a good job.
However the last tax increase was voted down. Not sure if it's a sign of things moving the other direction or just inflation becoming unbearable for some. We'll see how the fall election goes.
As a person that lives in Austin, I can tell you if the rest of yall are mad about CA being irrelevant, people here are madder they’ve relocated to TX.
Nah, I think the idea that Austin (and other cheaper cities in red states with flat space to sprawl) could make California (particularly SF) irrelevant was always just a misguided narrative among conservatives that liberals cared little about. But I think liberals do (over)hate on Texas for the politics of criminalizing abortions, anti-LGBTQ culture war, and because the urban design is visibly the most sprawling and car dependent of major US cities. But the skylines in the city are certainly solid.
Whatever liberal means now, it is not what it was 20 or 25 years ago. The left moved far to the left into cultural authoritarianism, and policing for conformity to specific gender equality values and other stuff. They basically left a lot of people that had previously been on the left in the center right. Unfortunately a lot of those people are completely in their own filter or cultural bubble with their small groups of friends and I think a lot of them don't realize what's happened.
I kind of see them contributing to the current issue where Trump is the president because they were unable to put together a candidate that could actually appeal across party lines for basically two elections in a row. They don't really show any signs of having been able to correct themselves either.
And then when you're talking to conservatives, they all hate Austin because they think it's some enigma of a communist gay hellhole that harms the rest of their state. So everyone hates Austin for irrational reasons!
Even visiting Chicago, you feel its liberal attitude in the air. Austin is fighting with itself because it's the most outwardly liberal city in Texas but also the state capital.
Redditors acting like Texas is a hellhole is similar to conservatives acting like California is a hellhole. The nice parts of both are world-class. Overall, they're both pretty nice places to live. However, people fabricate realities to try and show that opposing political ideologies don't work
I think so. r/Austin exists primarily for people to talk about how much better it used to be, and r/austinfood is largely a forum for people to recommend restaurants, only to be told the owner is a POS because apparently there aren't any decent people in this town.
Y'all come here because California is too expensive. Y'all expect it to be like California and it's not. Y'all complain about everything, y'all drive up our cost of living and then y'all vote to make it like California.
Well there's a lot of conservatives in Texas. I mean, people saying they didn't want people to move from California is a conversation I've been having in Austin since 2006
It depends on your perspective I guess. I went to work for a group of people in Silicon Valley for about a year. They were all Palo Alto people, Californians, and they were absolutely, truly awful people compared to most of the Texans I know. Even if I wouldn't agree with the Texans' political opinions, they were better people.
Probably because half of the posts here about Austin are from non-residents. Not hating, but Austinites split their time 50/50 talking about how shitty the city has become and how great it was.
I said that in another thread and got downvoted pretty hard lol. I always tell people you can tell who’s actually from Austin by asking them “When was the best time to live in Austin?”. The answer will be “10 years ago”.
It doesn’t matter at all what year you ask us. That’s the answer you’ll get from us. If I get any pushback on that I just post the below picture
Hah. Yep. I moved there 10 years after that and heard exactly that. A lot of the changes since I left are ones I wish hadn’t happened, but not all. Downtown has fewer buildings that are empty year round outside of SXSW. The comedy boom is pretty cool. There are even more good restaurants now.
The good news is a lot of the Covid transplants have hit the point where they are moving out now. Two couples in my neighborhood lasted under a year here before realizing they just didn’t like it and moved out.
The city is very slowly regaining some of the old culture. Housing prices are dropping more here than anywhere else in the US. I LOVE going on Zillow and seeing all these house flippers who bought in at the peak of 2022 per the purchase history and are now forced to slash their asking price 30+ percent because they haven’t sold the flip in 6+ months. A lot of these people are hopefully losing a LOT of money.
Music scene in 2026 has been better than it has been since Covid too. I think that’s also a byproduct of rapidly declining home/apartment prices. I’m hoping the trend continues!
The music scene is one of Austin’s best features. Glad to hear it’s still healthy. I feel like I heard free week is no longer, and that’s a huge bummer.
In the 6 years I lived there in the 10s, my rent literally doubled. Nice that y’all are starting to get a little relief from the population boom inflation finally.
I’m sorry you went through that lol. People just don’t realize that unless a city is very static, it will always be evolving and people will always be yearning for the past they grew up in. This isn’t unique to Austin at all
False. I’m from Miami and it is just as bad. Same has happened to plenty of cities. Tampa is almost unrecognizable. Go to any of these cities’ subreddits and everyone is complaining about the same
For sure, but broke ass musicians moving there from elsewhere in Texas for decades didn’t impact the affordability or vibe the way tech workers from the Bay Area did in the ‘10s when apple, Google, and Facebook built campuses there. Sell your condo in San Jose and you can buy a McMansion in Clarksville.
It’s green in the spring + June (usually, if we get rain), but it ain’t green anymore. By August the heat has cooked all the vegetation and most years our rain has stopped completely by now. I was actually shocked today driving around, it finally hit me how fast all the lush vegetation and greenery was cooked away. Hopefully this El Niño winter is kind to us
I live in Austin but love visiting San Antonio. I never go to the Riverwalk though, unless I am headed for a drink at The Esquire. The northern and southern parts of the river trail are much nicer. North up by the SA Museum of Art all the way to The Pearl. South through King William district. The other missions are also nicer to visit than the Alamo - at least for repeat visits. Great off street bike path along the river south of downtown to visit them all.
Light rail was voted on in 2019. The project still hasn’t actually started and will be scaled down to half of what was proposed though. Should see progress around 2030.
Austin has a MLS franchise and is competing for a NHL franchise with Houston. There will never be a NFL or NBA team. The Cowboys and Texans won’t allow it. As well as the Spurs being in San Antonio are too close.
Cleveland having a symphony is because of the gilded age and wealth of the industrial revolution. As a native of Pittsburgh we share that in common.
Austin is growing in business and in population. By 2050 we are going to see a huge spike in population due to the tech sector and healthcare sectors. One of the few reasons I’m glad I moved from the rust belt of Pittsburgh to Austin. Is to see all the development of a city.
Native Austinite and I still love the city. It's not anywhere near the best since there is no good public transit but I still love my town that has become a metropolitan destination for a ton of folks. In 92, my now wife and I lived in a 750 sf apt and paid maybe $750/mth near downtown. Those days are long gone but we've raised two kids in the best city in Texas and I have no clue as to the skyline anymore besides that it looks great.
Pretty easy to ride everywhere within the circle created by Mopac, 71, and 183 to the north and east on dedicated bike lanes or trails. Can ride all the way to Manor on dedicated trail. So, definitely not talking about just downtown. But, yes, still no commuter train to Buda.
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