COVID hurled 'jet fuel’ on big city exodus, and it won’t stop: Real estate developer
Housing boom in Texas caused by pandemic, Ari Rastegar says
The coronavirus pandemic "threw jet fuel" on the exodus from high tax states such as New York, California and Illinois to Texas, according to Rastegar Property Company CEO Ari Rastegar.
The expert real estate developer also pointed out that the housing boom taking place in the Lone Star State points towards a massive influx of Americans searching for a better cost of living.
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ARI RASTEGAR: Housing prices in Austin, Dallas, and throughout the Golden Triangle are surging. In Austin, in particular, you're literally seeing houses sell within 24 hours without any financing contingencies, which is completely unprecedented. So you saw Elon [Musk] say the other day that, you know, there's an urgent need for housing development, which obviously takes being a big part of. We’re building almost 4,000 houses in the Austin MSA because there is just a striking need for it when you have 156 people a day moving to the city, including companies like Oracle moving their headquarters and Tesla building the largest Gigafactory in the world, you know, you need housing and infrastructure to support that type of growth.
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The point is, like we see this as a COVID thing, but really this was already happening, COVID threw jet fire -- jet fuel on it… That's what really caused this thing to really boom at the area it is, and people not feeling comfortable at the urban core and causing this home price surge so that they would have this level of adhering to social distancing.
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It's not going to stop. People are going to keep coming to these states. Employers love it because their employees get an immediate raise effectively by moving to Texas, Florida or cities like that. And not just on a tax basis, but houses are cheaper, lower cost of living, gas is cheaper. So there's a whole confluence of events that are leading to this.