The city lets builders build.
Jim Geraghty writes today about why Austin, Texas, is thriving, having grown from the nation’s 27th most populous city in 1990 to its 12th largest today. He lists a relatively low tax burden, a friendly business environment, a top-notch research university, and an exciting culture as reasons for the attraction. I would add the factor most important to getting people to move to your city: actually letting them move in through an abundant, affordable housing supply.
Five years ago, when Austin’s housing market became red-hot during the pandemic, the city’s median rent rocketed by 30 percent to over $1,600, well above the national level. Since then, rents in Austin have fallen to around $1,300 per month — now below the national median — and are still going down. As home prices have continued to rise nationally, Austin’s have fallen from a 2022 peak of $681,000 to now $497,000, a decline of 27 percent in four years.
How did Austin pull off affordable housing when almost every other major city has gone in the opposite direction? It built, a lot. From 2021 to 2025, Austin expanded its number of homes by 10.5 percent versus a national rate of just 3.2 percent. At the market’s peak, it was permitting 957 homes per 100,000 residents, far more than any other major metro area. Today, Austin remains the second-fastest-building large metro as measured by number of new homes per existing ones, behind only Raleigh, N.C.
The lesson is elementary: When the supply of housing goes up in an area, prices go down. Austin has taken an all-of-the-above approach to new homes. It’s building a healthy mix of detached single-family and multifamily houses, but construction is dominated by larger apartment buildings. The city has deregulated duplexes, triplexes, and accessible dwelling units. It has also reduced minimum lot sizes to allow for smaller homes, expanded mixed-use zoning, eased parking and height requirements, and streamlined permitting. As people filtered upward into newer units, rents fell the most in older, non-luxury buildings that mostly serve lower-income tenants.
Plenty of people would love to live in San Francisco or New York City, but most are unable because housing is too scarce and too expensive. By simply letting builders build, Austin has allowed new arrivals to live where they want, in the kind of homes they prefer, and at a lower cost for old and new residents alike. Those are results that no amount of rent control and public-housing dollars can touch.