James DeLoney - Austin Homes for Sale

09/03/2026

Amazon is putting a robotics manufacturing facility in East Austin, on roughly 300 acres off Hergotz and Dalton lanes, in the newly annexed area people call the Dog's Head. Three hundred to five hundred manufacturing and engineering jobs. Mayor Kirk Watson said Amazon asked for no economic incentives and no public money.

I've watched a lot of these announcements land over twenty years, and the honest read is that the job number rarely changes anything nearby.

Three to five hundred jobs, in a metro that added 14,900 in a single year, is a small share of the demand picture. Families don't reorganize a housing search because a plant opened four miles away.

The part that tends to matter is the sentence nobody clips: the city had already approved a TIF plan funding roads and utilities across the surrounding 2,600-acre district, reimbursing the developer.

Utilities and roads change what a piece of land can become. That's the slow variable, and it moves years ahead of any hiring announcement.

If you own out that way, watch the easements and the road funding rather than the careers page.

09/01/2026

Your October property tax bill is being set right now, and most of the meetings that decide it are still ahead of you.

Austin City Council adopted its rate on August 12: $0.579948 per $100 of valuation. The city puts the impact at about $9.48 a month, roughly $113.76 a year, on what it defines as a typical homestead, a median value of $471,603 after the 20% general homestead exemption.

That's the piece that got covered. It also isn't the biggest line on the bill.

Last adopted rates for the five entities on a typical City of Austin bill, per $100 of valuation:

Austin ISD — $0.9252
City of Austin — $0.579948
Travis County — $0.375845
Central Health — $0.1180
Austin Community College — $0.1034

Only the city figure is for 2026. Austin ISD, Travis County, Central Health, and ACC have not adopted theirs yet, so those four are tax year 2025, the most recent each has set.

Central Health has published its calendar: public hearing September 2, board vote September 9, Commissioners Court September 15. Its options run from no new revenue up to 8% above it, which it estimates at about $44 a year on a median Travis County homestead of $372,638.

Every taxing unit in Texas has until September 29 to adopt a rate. Bills can start mailing October 1. Payment is due January 31.

If you've ever wanted to say something to the people setting your rate, the next four weeks are the window. By the time the bill lands in October, the arguing is over.

09/01/2026

Looking to change the mood of the day? A little creativity can go a long way.

Creative-types can feel stalled if they don’t have a frequent creative release. But with work ...

08/31/2026

There are two Austin medians, and they're $142,000 apart.

City of Austin, July: $577,000, down 1.4% from a year ago.
Austin–Round Rock–San Marcos metro, same month: $435,000, up 1.0%.

One fell. The other rose. Both come out of the same report.

Nearly every headline leads with the metro figure, because that's the number that travels. It blends the city with five surrounding counties, where most of the sales volume actually happens. Fine for a regional story. Not much use if you own a house off South Lamar.

The number I'd pay attention to inside the city limits: closed sales were up 11% year over year in July, 1,005 homes, while the median came off 1.4%. Months of inventory sat at 4.5.

More houses changing hands at a slightly softer price. That reads to me like a market clearing, not a market sliding.

08/31/2026

A stat that stopped me this week: only 1.9% of real estate brokerages report using no AI tools at all in 2026, down from 10.6% just two years ago. Not using AI in this business went from normal to rare in under two years.

It doesn't replace knowing a street, a school zone, or what a seller is actually going through. But the tools that used to separate a good agent from a great one are shifting fast, and most of the shift is invisible to clients — it happens in research, prep, and follow-up, not in what a buyer sees at a showing.

What's something in your own work that changed faster than you expected it to?

08/28/2026

New in Leander: Westlake Dermatology is opening a location in Leander Union, right on Crystal Falls Parkway — basically at the Cedar Park border. It's one of about a dozen business openings logged in the Leander/Cedar Park corridor this month.

If you're weighing where to put down roots along 183A, this kind of steady local business growth is one of the better signals — better than a single new subdivision announcement.

08/26/2026

What's actually happening in Cedar Park's Bell District right now: public build-out is continuing even as private development slows down elsewhere.

The arts center is advancing at the district's south edge. Cedar Park Veterans Memorial Park has pool expansions underway. And close by, a new housing development is moving forward in Pflugerville, with an apartment complex progressing in Austin.

Worth watching if you're tracking this corridor — public infrastructure investment like this tends to be a longer-lead indicator than private building permits.

08/25/2026

Property tax bills are mailed in October, and most Austin homeowners are about to see something unusual this year: your bill is likely going up even though your home's value didn't.

Here's why. Your tax bill is value times rate- two separate numbers- and this year the rate moved more than the value did. Travis County average home values were roughly flat. But the City of Austin adopted its FY26-27 tax rate on Aug 12 at $0.579948 per $100 of value, which works out to about $113.76 more per year for the typical homeowner.

Nobody explains this part: a flat or falling value doesn't guarantee a flat or falling bill. Worth knowing before the bill lands in your mailbox in October.

08/25/2026

Looking to create a comfortable space? These design tips can help.

Looking for a home so cozy you almost want to cuddle with it? The following design elements can crea...

08/24/2026

City of Austin's July numbers landed this week. Median sold price: $577,000, down 1.4% from a year ago. The number that actually moved is inventory — active listings inside the city are down 18.2%, while closed sales are up 11%. Fewer homes for sale, more of them selling, price off a point and a half. That's a market clearing, not a market falling.

Rates helped: 30-year averaged 6.65% as of Aug 20, the second straight weekly drop.

If you've been waiting for the big discount that never showed up, this is why it hasn't.

Source: Unlock MLS, July 2026 Central Texas Housing Report (published Aug 11) · Freddie Mac PMMS, Aug 20.