I’m sure you may have heard or read about Texas being a hotbed of activity for COVID-19, but many Austinites are still working and people are still definitely spending money. My children go to school in Pflugerville and the parent survey that Pflugerville ISD recently sent out showed that nearly 60% of households that answered the survey were not financially affected by the outbreak of COVID-19 in the Austin area. As of now, our schools are remote for the first three weeks. Once that time has passed the district will take a better look at the situation and decide on allowing the kids to return to their classrooms. I bring this up because we have many properties in the Pflugerville area and other similar suburbs all over town that are experiencing the same thing.
Stone Oak Property Management is still being very careful as a company and most of our staff continue to work remotely. However, our production and level of service have not faltered, in fact, many of the staff seem happier and more productive. This is great news for everyone as we want everyone to enjoy the work they do. We have expanded our staff by adding a couple of new team members to better serve our clients and their properties.
For the most up-to-date and accurate info on the Austin MSA COVID-19 cases visit the link at the end of this paragraph. This data comes directly from the City of Austin. You can sort by cases, deaths and it has a great break down by age and other various factors. You can check out the Austin COVID-19 Data for yourself.
In my previous posts, I had mentioned how large companies were being attracted to Austin and moving operations to the area. Well, the hiring has now begun. There is a brief article below from our local news station stating that Tesla has officially started posted jobs! We are thrilled to have them here and the positive economic impact they will have on our beautiful city.
We're also becoming a part of the military-industrial complex on the tech side. On August 11th BAE Systems announced an expansion of their footprint in Austin by building a $150M campus that will double their workforce here. BAE is categorized as a tech company but they are really military contractors.
Last of the pretty big economic news that I wanted to share is that Amazon announced a few weeks ago that they're expanding operations in Central Texas by opening a new facility in Kyle. They have a new large facility that is currently under construction in my neck of the woods, Pflugerville.
Lastly, rents haven’t shown signs of weakening. We have been collecting rents at nearly normal rates and most tenants that have found themselves in tough financial positions have either made payment arrangements with us or voluntarily moved out. We do have pending evictions, but most can’t be filed until September due to the moratorium on residential evictions filed by the City of Austin.
I will leave you with this - wash your hands, don’t panic, and don’t believe nearly anything on social media. My favorite quote that sums it up was sent to me by my wife from her Facebook and was: “Don’t believe everything on the internet - Abraham Lincoln”.
Please don't hesitate to contact our Austin property management team if we can be of assistance to you in any way. Our team can be reached directly at 512.617.6766 or you can use the form on our site to contact us.
Author:
Jason Huval, MBA
Broker and Partner
Stone Oak Property Management
