Housing for the well-heeled
Austin’s hot luxury housing market sizzles with $10-million-and-up sales, report says
The ultra-rich were ultra-busy buying homes last year in Austin.
A new report from residential real estate brokerage Compass shows 11 homes in the Austin area sold for at least $10 million in 2021. That’s up a whopping 450 percent from the previous year — and marks the biggest increase among the 30 U.S. markets covered in the report.
Meanwhile, Austin’s sales volume in the $10 million-plus category totaled $189 million last year, up an eye-popping 562 percent from 2020. Among markets with the biggest jumps in sales volume, Austin ranked second, behind only suburban Long Island, New York (854 percent). In 2021, Austin’s ultra-luxury sales volume reached $189 million.
Compass attributes the growth of Austin’s ultra-luxury home market to record-low interest rates, as well as greater wealth among people in the tech and cryptocurrency sectors.
Compass real estate agent Dara Allen says most, if not all, of the $10 million-plus homes that changed hands here in 2020 were along Lake Austin. But in 2021, the region’s ultra-luxury reach extended to luxury condos in downtown Austin and suburban homes in gated communities, she says.
In 2022, Allen predicts, Austin will witness more $10 million-plus properties listed for sale than ever before. This will include estates in places like Dripping Springs and the Spanish Oaks neighborhood near Bee Cave, she says.
“People are spending more time at home and need space for sometimes even multiple home offices,” Allen says.
The only other Texas market mentioned in the Compass report is Dallas-Fort Worth. There, 10 homes with prices of $10 million or more were sold in 2021, up 66.7 percent from the previous year. Sales volume in that category rose to $115 million last year, up 69 percent from 2020.
