Texas Property Files

During my recent trip to New Orleans I spent a week in Austin, Texas. There for music and culture and a bit of an explore. Prior to this trip I had attended the PIA planning conference in Perth where I met Chris O'Connor - an Aussie planner currently working in Austin. He spoke to conference about "Keeping Austin Wierd" - one of the city's most popular slogans - and one which represents a culture which can make change (and it's planning, and planning for growth and development) difficult.

My trip to Austin was already planned, so I thought I'd touch base with Chris when I got there, to try and get to grips with property prices and systems there. (Can't keep a planner down - even on holiday). I stayed at an AirBnB located in Canterbury Street, Austin. The googlestreetview image above gives quite a good idea of how this quiet residential street looks. From here to the CBD and music haunts etc is only 2 or 3 miles. Takes minutes to drive there. And there's a bus service not far away too. (Interestingly, Austin is really pro-cycling.... have to include here pic of great cycle/coffee cafe that's on the way to town...)

I asked Chris for information or links that would help me get a handle on what houses were selling for, how much land cost, and what property taxes were. He was really helpful, providing this information...

The East Side where you are staying is definitely a great spot to be given the types of things you’re looking to experience. The East Side is historically one of the lower-socioeconomic parts of town, but given how close it is to the city and relative affordability, there’s definitely a lot of renewal going on like what you have seen – as a result, the property prices have gone bananas in recent years.
I live on the other side of town down south, so I’m not entirely in specific tune with what the property values and construction costs would be. But I took a quick scan through Zillow and here’s a snapshot of real estate on the market in the 78702 area:
Established Homes:

• 1807 Haskell Street: 2018 built 3 bed x 2.5 bath (2,100 sf floor area) = $720,000

• 1201 Taylor Street: 2007 built 2 bed x 3 bath (1,414 sf floor area on 2,831 sf lot) = $625,000

• 1202 Canterbury: 2013 built 2 bed x 2 bath (1,113 sf floor area on 5,532 sf lot) = $674,000

• 1621 Holly Street: 1938 built 3 bed x 3 bath (1,512 sf floor area on 7,840 sf lot) = $600,000

Land & Future Home:

• 1209 Willow: 2 bed x 2 bath (958 sf floorspace) = $450,000 or 3 bed x 4 bath (1,853 sf floor area) = $725,000)

• 1304 Haskell: 3 bed x 4 bath (2,475 sf floor area) = $900,000

Land

• 1302 Taylor Street: 4,439 sf = $360,000

Zillow is actually a really good resource generally, as they sometimes have historic sales data if you know specific addresses. Sometime if you just Google the address, Zillow will be the first result that pops up. Happy browsing!
Property information is also able to be publicly viewed in Texas – you can head to the Travis County Appraisal District property search portal here: http://propaccess.traviscad.org/clientdb/?cid=1 and just punch in the address of the property you want to look at. It will give you a lot of info including ownership, the latest appraised value and the associated taxes.

You can learn a lot here, but also about the way the USA provides property data to the public. The links above will gradually go out of date - as properties are sold/taken off the market. So be in quick, or go straight to "Zillow". I was particularly interested in how public information was made available. So I checked out Travis County Appraisal systems...

I suggest you give it a try. The link is here. You can type in any of the street addresses listed above - just the number and the street name - and away you go. Interesting, and easy for the public. The link to the main Travis County Appraisal District website is here.