Condo City

New micro-apartments in East Austin signal growing trend of tiny spaces

New micro-units are coming to East Austin.

Nick Mickolas/ Flickr

Another mixed-used development is popping up in East Austin, this one with a twist. Spire, a 260-unit building featuring residential and retail space, will be built on the corner of East Fifth and Waller streets, Community Impact reports.

What makes this project unique, however, is its emphasis on micro-units, small residential units with floor plans less than 400 square feet.

Micro-units are an urban housing trend found everywhere from San Francisco to Manhattan to Tokyo. As more people ditch the suburbs for the city center, they bring with them a demand for better mass transit, eco-friendly living options and access to entertainment districts. Couple that growing trend with the millennials' penchant for putting off marriage and the baby boomers' desire to ditch the retirement communities for urban living, and you have a whole bunch of people looking for housing in urban cores.

Here in Austin, the trend is no different. Our city's astronomical growth is a healthy mix of young upstarts and retirees looking for a cool place to live out their golden years. Unfortunately, the city-wide driving habit and lack of truly dynamic mass transit options have caused Austin City Council to hesitate changing the city code to allow for less than one parking space per apartment (a traditional benchmark of micro-unit housing developments).

Considering its proximity to the Plaza Saltillo development, downtown and East Sixth Street, the Spire's location offers the desirable mass transit options and access to entertainment districts so many people desire. In addition to its residential units, Community Impact says Spire "will offer 6,500-square-feet of retail and live-work space along East Fifth Street" as well as an underground parking garage.

Along with many of the mixed-use developments currently slated for the east side, Spire also has plans to offer low-income housing units for residents who earn 50 percent to 70 percent less than Austin's median income ($52,800 for an individual, $75,400 for a four-person household).

Construction on Spire will begin in 2016.

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Eviction Notice

Major landlords with Austin ties being investigated for illegal rent hikes

Photo courtesy of KVUE

Some of Austin's rent woes could be a result of this alleged scheme.

The Justice Department (DOJ) is suing six of the country's largest landlords, along with RealPage, alleging they took part in a pricing scheme that harmed renters.

We already know the increase in population and businesses moving to Austin raised rental prices. But lawyer and owner of Texas Tenant Law Jennifer MacGeorge said the new DOJ lawsuit could prove illegal rent hikes made it even worse.

"It's about collusion versus competition," MacGeorge said. "It's just about trying to gouge the market and get as much as they can."

The antitrust lawsuit claims six property management companies — Cushman & Wakefield, LivCor, Cortland, Greystar, Dallas-based Willow Bridge, and Houston-based Camden, which have numerous locations in the Austin area — are using software like RealPage. Together, the landlords control 1.3 million apartment units.

According to the lawsuit, the software uses an algorithm to help set rents and privately share sensitive, non-public information with competitors, allowing landlords to align their prices and avoid competition.

MacGeorge said the result is higher rents, for not only residential but commercial properties. She said this type of behavior exacerbates affordability issues and displaces residents and small businesses.

"We're getting rid of people that help the economy sustain itself and be stable, which is what everybody's looking for in this environment where you can't even afford your groceries, and now you're worried about your rent. It's absolutely unacceptable," MacGeorge said.

The lawsuit names the Austin-Round Rock metro area multiple times, saying 30 percent or more of the residential properties in the area are using this type of software.

While MacGeorge mainly represents tenants, she found out some of her landlord clients are using similar pricing strategies to artificially raise prices.

"They are engaging in other practices that are artificially raising prices, such as putting in a rental rate at a renewal that's maybe 20 percent above what the tenant was paying before and leaving it that high only until the tenant moves out and then immediately dropping it," MacGeorge said.

Read the full story and watch the video at KVUE.com.

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