Austin Contrarian

What's for sale in central Austin? (4/07 edition)

Past editions are here, here and here. 

My search results (run on 4/30/07) are below.  Here are the parameters I used:  1400+ square-foot; single-family; active MLS listing; $300,000 or less.  I exclude condos, duplexes, and townhomes, even if listed in MLS under "single family."

South Austin (MLS areas 6 & 7):  One.  (Same as last month; different house.) 

North Austin (MLS areas 1B, 2 & 4):  18.  (Down from 21 last month.)  Almost all are in the Northcross neighborhoods (Crestview, Wooten, North Shoal Creek, or Allandale).  There are none in the rectangle bounded north-south by 45th and Town Lake and east-west by I-35 and MoPac. 

East Austin (MLS areas 3 and 5):  50, up from 48 42 last month.  This is the least useful tally -- a bunch of these houses are east of Springdale and really nowhere near central Austin.  But there's not a convenient way to sort the properties near downtown from the others.

Last Harvest

If you're following the Mueller development, take a look at Last Harvest by Witold Rybczynski.  It's about a "neotraditional development" in the Philadelphia exurbs.  Rybczynski is an architectual writer who teaches at Penn's School of Design.  In other words, he writes as someone who cares about good design.  He covers the developer's acquisition of the land, the first homeowners' move in, and the four years in between. 

The development, New Daleville, is a lot smaller than Mueller, and it's out in the middle of nowhere rather than in the middle of a city.  But it will give a sense of the problems that these Mueller-type developments face.  (You might want to skip the book if Catellus-bashing is a hobby you'd like to keep.)

What Mueller will look like in a couple of years

Well, this is what Mueller would look like in a couple of years if it were in New Jersey.  (The houses at Mueller will be a little more interesting, if you believe the developers' renderings.)

The photo is from this New York times article.  The 400-acre Washington Town Center in Washington Township, N.J. is so popular with families with children, it's run out of schools and is about to condemn another large tract of land to prevent it from being developed for more housing.

I think the wild demand for developments like this one illustrates one of the main problems with traditional zoning, as currently practiced:  it stifles choice.

There are a lot of people who would like an alternative to the typical suburban, "large"-yard lifestyle.  I am not criticizing this lifestyle.  If that's what you want, great.  At least you should be able to find what you want.  There's really nothing else to choose from besides condos.    Austin mandates suburban-home-plus-yard developments through minimum-lot-size regulations, FAR restrictions, impervious cover restrictsions and setback requirements. 

Mueller will be an experiment with different rules.  It won't be enough, though, not by a long shot.  Ask some of those who've just discovered they are priced out of Mueller.