Austin, TX
Rents in the Austin area have been falling for a year
To draw the picture of Austin rent prices over the past several years is to trace a dizzying mountain — up, up, up. And then a slope. A small slope, but a slope. Down. Not up.
For the past year, the average price of rent in the Austin area has been falling. Rent prices have decreased by about 6% year over year. The average monthly rent is now $1,528 for an apartment any size, down $100 a month from last year.
According to data from Zillow, this is the longest sustained drop in rent prices in the past decade.
“It’s bad for landlords and it’s great for tenants,” said Jake Wegmann, a real estate professor at the University of Texas at Austin. “We should be happy about this.”
The cause? A surge in apartment building and a drop in the number of people moving to the area.
“During the pandemic we saw all of this demand and developers said, ‘We need to build,’” said Ali Wolf, chief economist at Zonda, a company that tracks home construction data.
Tens of thousands of people moved to Austin in the early years of the pandemic. Many could work from home, while others could afford to leave shared living situations and look for their own apartments. In response, rent prices rose at an incredible pace. To developers this indicated a need: more homes. In 2022, developers started building about 40,000 new apartments, more than they had in any subsequent year.
While the population surge that defined Austin in 2020 and 2021 has since slowed, tens of thousands of new apartments are still opening. That’s because of the nature of construction; typically, several years pass between breaking ground on a new building and opening apartments to renters.
What typically happens when developers start building a significant number of new rental homes is that prices drop, Wegmann said, but often only among the most expensive apartments. But there are so many new apartments in Austin that prices are falling across a spectrum of buildings, from apartment complexes with gyms and pools to buildings built half a century ago and beset with much-needed repairs.
The average rent price for these older apartments is down 9% over the past year, according to data from the firm MRI Software.
“This is like adding chairs to the music chairs game,” Wegmann said. “You end up with more and more empty chairs, which give people looking for apartments more choices. Their landlords have to cut rents to fill apartment buildings.”
But both Wegmann and Wolf cautioned that falling rent prices does not equate to more affordable rent. In the year leading up to falling rents in Austin, prices surged by nearly 20%.
A study from the Harvard University Joint Center for Housing Studies found that in 2022, nearly half of all renters living in Austin and the surrounding counties spent more than a third of their income on rent, a metric many experts agree is unaffordable. Rent prices in Austin began falling a year later.
As for whether rents could continue to drop, Wolf said yes.
“This one feels like to me one of the easier crystal balls to answer,” she said. A large number of new apartments are still under construction, and when they open to renters that means more supply of housing. “As we look at the next year, [falling rents are] almost a guarantee.”
But as rents drop, so does the income for developers and the incentive to build. Wegmann said builders are already halting some projects, a trend likely to continue.
“We’re gonna certainly see a retrenchment,” he said. “We’re going to see way fewer projects starting over the next couple of years … That’s capitalism!”
AUSTIN, Texas – State and federal agriculture officials said highly pathogenic avian flu has been found in a herd of dairy cows in Texas.
What we know:
Officials said the H5N1 virus was confirmed with laboratory tests in late May after cows at an unspecified farm became sick and milk production dropped. The dairy has since been quarantined and an investigation is underway.
This is the first case of avian flu in a Texas dairy herd this year, officials said.
What they’re saying:
“The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is confident that pasteurization is effective at inactivating H5N1, and that the commercial, pasteurized milk supply is safe,” officials at the Texas Animal Health Commission said in a statement.
A dairy cow is seen at a farm on June 1, 2026. (Tim Evans/Bloomberg / Getty Images)
Dig deeper:
H5N1 has a high rate of severe disease and death in animals that become infected.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the risk to the general public from avian flu is low. Some sporadic human infections have been reported around the world since 1997. There have been no known cases of person-to-person spreading of avian flu.
The Source: Information in this story came from the Texas Animal Health Commission, the USDA, the FDA and the CDC.
AUSTIN, Texas — Self-driving cars have become a common sight on Austin streets, but a new Texas law is adding tougher requirements for the companies behind the wheelless vehicles.
Senate Bill 2807 imposes stricter rules on autonomous vehicle companies operating in the state, including state authorization, emergency response plans for law enforcement, and a public portal where residents can verify operators and file safety complaints.
The changes come as Austin continues to track incidents involving autonomous vehicles. The city’s autonomous vehicle dashboard shows 75 incidents in 2026, including a collision, eight near misses, and seven incidents of ignoring police direction.
Attorney Drew Gibbs, a partner at Slingshot Law, said one crash involved a Waymo vehicle.
“There was a T-bone collision. A pretty serious T-bone collision where a Waymo just crashed into the side of my client’s vehicle,” Gibbs said.
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One of the incidents of ignoring police direction happened during the mass shooting on West Sixth Street back in March, when three people died, and 15 others were injured.
Austin Police Association President Michael Bullock said autonomous vehicles can struggle in unusual situations.
“It didn’t impede on anything in the moment, but it’s not necessarily uncommon where these vehicles don’t quite know how to deal with these one-off scenarios,” Bullock said.
The new law requires autonomous vehicle companies to be authorized by the state, to provide an emergency response plan for law enforcement, and to participate in a public-facing portal that allows the public to verify operators and submit safety complaints.
Kara Kockelman, a professor of transportation and engineering at the University of Texas at Austin, welcomed the added oversight.
“I’m glad that the state is taking this a bit more seriously now,” she said. “It’s important not to just let others slip in without kind of meeting those basic minimums.”
Bullock said the emergency planning requirement may not make a major difference in fast-moving situations. Asked how impactful it is to have a fully laid out emergency response plan, Bullock said, “These plans are great, but it takes time to work through all of those versus the immediacy of having someone behind the wheel.”
The four autonomous vehicle companies operating in Austin — Waymo, Zoox, AV-Ride, and Tesla — are all state-authorized.
The Texas DMV said an autonomous vehicle company can lose its authorization to operate in Texas if the agency deems the vehicles are operating in a way that endangers public safety.
Waymo was contacted for comment, but had not responded.
AUSTIN, Texas – Texas Secretary of State Jane Nelson said Tuesday she will leave the post next month.
What we know:
In a statement, Nelson said her resignation will be effective July 17 but did not provide a reason for the departure.
“It has been an honor to serve the people of Texas in this role,” Nelson said. “My time as Secretary came at an important moment for Texas, and I am proud of what we have been able to accomplish as an agency in under four years.”
Nelson has served in the role since 2023.
Among other things, the Secretary of State oversees elections and business filings in the state and serves as the chief diplomat of Texas.
View of Texas State Senator Jane Nelson, during the 80th Texas Legislature, on the floor of the Senate at the Texas State Capitol, Austin, Texas, January 22, 2007. (John Anderson/The Austin Chronicle / Getty Images)
What they’re saying:
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott described Nelson as extraordinary.
“I am deeply grateful for her long and loyal service and outstanding leadership. She has represented our state with grace and honor across the globe, and Texas is better because of it,” Abbott said. “Cecilia and I wish her all the best in the next chapter of her distinguished career.”
Dig deeper:
According to the Secretary of State’s office, Nelson has presided over seven statewide elections during her tenure with a cumulative 27 million ballots cast and broke a record with more than 3 million active business filers.
Nelson also served three decades in the Texas Senate, where she remains the longest-serving Republican in state history.
The Source: Information in this story came from the Texas Secretary of State’s office.
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