Braxton Beyer Your Austin Realtor®

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Austin is #1 on the Forbes list of cities where you get the most bang for your buck.  Forbe’s used five factors to determine their list.  Here are the factors with Austin’s ranking for each:

Job Growth Projections Rank: 1

Inflation Rank: 24

Median House Price/Median Household Income Rank: 8

Median Income/Cost of Living Index Rank: 5

Gas Prices Rank: 9

Not surprisingly, San Antonio follows on the list at #2.  Read the full article to see the complete list.

The National Low Income Housing Coalition recently conducted a study in the 100 most populous metro areas in the country.  They analyzed whether it makes more sense to buy or rent in each area.  Of the top ten areas where it makes more sense to buy than rent, five of them are in Texas.  Austin comes in at number ten.  So, all of you renters out there, start looking.  With the mortgage rates as good as they are, now is a great time to make that move.

The BBC is running a remarkable story about a beggar from Calcutta who is crippled with Polio and who has spent the majority of her life begging. Laxmi Das, 60 years old, started begging on the streets of India when she was 16.

Unlike many beggars, Ms. Das was wise enough to save most of what she obtained. Recently she took her years worth of savings, roughly 200 pounds of coins, to the bank and opened an account. I think this a great story but what really caught my attention was the fact that the bank said she now qualifies for a credit card. Are you kidding me? Hello! She is a beggar; she has no job. I know banks have to make money too, but this is a bit ridiculous.

Having said that, however, this woman does seem smarter than most of us, having proven that she can actually save instead of spending money frivolously.

Many of you may have heard a commercial on the radio recently by a guy named Armando Montelongo.  He is selling his instructional real estate materials.  He mentions that he appears on the A&E television show Flip This House. Well you should know that he is not all he is cracked up to be.  As they say, Buyer Beware!  He has been indicted right here in Travis County for Fraud and has had his own share of foreclosure troubles.

Here are a few mentions of him around the web:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flip_This_House_(TV_series)#Season_Three_2

Flip This Lawsuit is a site containing a lot of information regarding the Montelongos and their relationship with the show and its former cast.  This post in particular is very interesting.

Here is an article from the SA Express reagarding his indictment.

One of my client’s home was shown on KVUE last night.  I represented him when buying the house.  Patrick Easter, who you will see in the clip is the developer who built my client’s home and is placing another one next to it.

The story covers manufactured homes and the benefits they can provide.  One of the biggest misconceptions about manufactured homes is that they are all mobile homes and cheap.  This is simply not true.  Homes manufactured in a warehouse can be more efficient, built faster, and built better than many other homes since they are constructed in a controlled environment.  Many people are realizing this and that is why manufactured homes are growing in popularity.  Watch the story for more info.

I attended the City’s Waller Creek Workshop recently and was very impressed with the ideas they had as well as changes they had implemented due to citizen feedback.  They are continuing to take feedback through their online survey until the end of this month.  I urge each of you to give your input.  The Waller Creek development can be a major attraction for our city.  Let’s make sure we get it right.

I submitted an email to the Mayor recently through ABOR’s Take Action website.  I received a form-letter response back.  It points out a few directions that the city council gave to the task force that will be formulating the recommendations regarding the ordinance.  If these directions are followed, then the ordinance could actually be very helpful and less damaging as many of us feared.  Here is the full email: Read the rest of this entry »

Villa Muse, the large entertainment project, announced that it will look to build elsewhere instead of in East Austin.  They had been in discussions with the city to be removed from Austin’s ETJ but Austin ultimately decided against doing this.  Being out of the ETJ would have prevented Austin from annexing the land in the future. According to Mayor Wynn, the project could have moved only a few thousand feet and been out of the ETJ but ultimately they decided against this.  Hopefully, the project can be salvaged as I think it would be a great boon for the city.

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This time Austin sits atop the list of Greenest Retirement Cities