A recent article in the Austin American Statesman had this headline but also added the fact that 18,000 new jobs were added in our area in October. Now folks, 18,000 jobs (people) equates to a fair sized city! These states, according to the article which quoted several economists, means that our area has fully recovered economically from the COVID-19 pandemic. Amen to that. But to throw a bit of cold water on the good news we are reminded that the unemployment rate in October 2019 was 2.6%. However, in April 2019 the unemployment rate was a whopping 11.8%, so we have come a long way.

UT professor of economics Dirk Mateer stated that he is very pleased with a 3.4% unemployment rate and the figure is considered to be “good to great in most places”. Well duh. He went on to predict that the area unemployment rate in 6 months will be around 3%. Additionally, he stated that new employers are moving to Austin greater than the labor force is growing, meaning that there are more jobs available than there are people to fill them.

So, what does this have to do with real estate in our area? It means that now is a great time to own Austin area residential real estate because our area is growing and because these giants of industry, Amazon, Apple, Oracle, Samsung, and now Tesla, are relocating here or significantly expanding their operations. In essence, they have done our homework for us. They are here to stay which means that residential rentals can be a good long haul investment for us. Just look at the Bay Area of California real estate – it’s hard to make the numbers work there for investments; not so here.

Happy Thanksgiving Y’all!