he residential development at the old Mueller Airport in Austin, TX is in its second phase as we move through Spring of 2009. Are we going to run out of homes here soon?
To say that home sales have been brisk here would be an understatement. Here are a few statistics that might shed some light on the interest in Mueller:
- David Weekley hit 114% of there sales targets in April (according to their project board which I noticed when I visited their project office last week). More on this later.
- Meritage have just nine homes in inventory and four homes that can be built in this phase.
- Standard Pacific had four inventory Andrews / Duren plan homes three weeks ago – now they are wrapping up contracts for all of those.
- Streetman sold four of their flex homes in eight days about two weeks ago.
- Muskin have sold out in the second garden court, and Saldana homes have two garden court homes left that are currently under construction.
So there aren’t many new homes that are “move-in ready” right now. There is still one resale home available at Mueller.
Are we going to run out of homes at Mueller? For a while below the $400,000 range, yes! There are still going to be future phases of development. The City of Austin will release land to the developer, Catellus, and the developer will sell it to the builders. The builders will take between 4 and 8 months to build on the average.
True, there are still lots available, but not many. David Weekley raised their prices at the start of May. You could see that as a reflection of the rising costs of construction, or you could see it as a reflection of limited supply versus higher demand.
In my opinion, the “affordability gap” will broaden in the near future, with mostly homes above $400,000 available while the rest of phase II sells out. Maybe we’ll see an “availability gap” as discussed in this short video.
Garreth Wilcock is a Realtor living and working in Mueller. He helps sell homes at Mueller and buyers find homes at Mueller.