“What goes up must come down.” That’s the word from realtor.com, in proclaiming Austin No. 1 on its list of cities where home prices have dropped the most in the past three months. According to their statistics, based presumably on the listings on their site, the median home list price was down 10.3% between June and September, “almost wiping out the gains seen over the past year.” That $558,275 median asking price was still up 2.2% year over year, but that’s the lowest yearly increase of any city on the list.
Austin City Council Candidate Forums
• Austin PBS hosted a mayoral forum yesterday with candidates Kirk Watson, Celia Israel, Jennifer Virden, and Phil Brual, to be broadcast this Sunday, Oct. 16, at 3pm on Austin PBS.
• This coming Thursday, Oct. 20, is the finale of the official series, co-sponsored by the city and the local League of Women Voters – a doubleheader featuring the two highest-profile of the six City Council races: the center city’s District 9 at 6pm, and the mayor at 7:30pm, back-to-back at City Hall, 301 W. Second. Watch in person, online, or on TV, or listen by radio or phone; see all that info at austintexas.gov/candidateforums.
• The Chronicle is holding its endorsement interviews this week; look for our endorsements in next week’s issue, as early voting begins Monday, Oct. 24. Be prepared!
Scoring the Strategic Housing Blueprint is the topic of the ULI monthly breakfast this coming Wednesday, Oct. 19 – a discussion on updates to the Land Development Code, and how Proposition A on the November ballot fits into our broader housing goals, with Erica Leak and Rosie Truelove from the city’s Housing and Planning Department, moderated by Planning Commissioner Awais Azhar. It’ll take place from 7:30 to 9am (with discussion starting at 8am), in person at the Austin Central Library and virtually via Zoom. Pricing ranges from free to $75; register at austin.uli.org.
Looking Ahead
The 20th and Final Harvest Classic Rally will be held in Luckenbach, Texas, next weekend, Oct. 21-22. There’s camping and campfire socializing Friday and Saturday nights – one of a very few times when camping is allowed on the historic grounds – a barbecue and movie Saturday night, cowboy breakfasts, plus rides and rallies and lots of vintage motorcycles and their fans, and the whole thing is a major fundraiser for the Candlelighters Childhood Cancer Foundation, organized by Central Texas Motorcycle Charities, which is a group of vintage bike enthusiasts who’ve had personal experiences with childhood cancer. The series of rallies has had a 20-year run and is aiming to hit a cool million dollars in total donations with this swan-song event. Help them out at harvestclassic.org.
OOPS: An eagle-eyed reader spotted two errors in last week’s “Public Notice”: The bar where Hays County Commissioner Walt Smith urinated in public last New Year’s Eve is in Dripping Springs, not Wimberley, and the date he knocked over a delivery truck in West Austin was April 28, 2021, not April 8.
My apologies.
This article appears in The Drinks Issue (2022).