Bespoke Investment Group notes that housing declines from peaks show a big disparity. The chart above shows the percentage difference between current median home prices and maximum home prices in twenty cities, showing a big difference in areas that have declined vs areas that are holding up pretty well, which includes Dallas, the only Texas city on the list.

KVUE.com says “homes in Austin are up for sale and buyers are snatching them up.” Austin’s housing market is relatively healthy, though developers have cut back on new homes (which means that existing homes are selling). [Link]

Roma Design Group and HR&A Advisors Inc. reported to the City of Austin that it needs a changed approach to affordable housing in downtown Austin. According to the report, “low- to moderate-priced downtown housing will require public subsidies, and even then it is not likely to come in the form of high-rise towers that have dominated the downtown development boom.” [Link]

The Roma report recommends that the city concentrate its affordable housing efforts and dollars on less expensive mid-rise buildings (less than six stories) and that it help pay for them with fees paid by developers who want extra height and density for their projects.

The city has relied on developers to voluntarily include units to be sold at below market rates in their downtown projects or make a donation to the city to be used for affordable housing in exchange for density and height bonuses that allow them to build more units than zoning and city regulations allow….The main reason the city’s approach isn’t working, according to Roma, is that the gap is simply too large between the cost of building one-bedroom condominiums in high-rises and what a household making below the area’s median family income can afford.