The real test will come when the Fed begins to cut rates, as indicated for later this year, making it a challenging market for both parties.”Clare Losey, ABoR’s housing economist, recently said, “From the buyer’s standpoint, there are a number of advantages and disadvantages…The biggest headwind to them are higher mortgage rates and the decline in purchasing power.”Here are the full stats for Austin and the greater metro:Here’s a chart showing the median sales price of a single-family home in the City of Austin for the first half of 2024:The median sales price for a single-family home in June 2024 was up roughly 16% from the beginning of the year.

True, I never built anything more than a treehouse when I was eleven, but technically a treehouse is a house so…All I had to do was work with Honomobo to finalize the design, get architectural drawings, receive HOA approval, get a county building permit, get a driveway permit, clear trees for a build site, find a logging truck to take those trees to a lumber mill, find a mill, find someone to take the lumber from the mill to my house, dry the lumber, take a semester of woodworking to learn how to make furniture, engineer/permit/build a septic system, get a well permitted and drilled, install a well pump, learn what a pitless is, install a water line from the pump to the foundation, install a pressure tank, connect the house plumbing to the septic and pressure tank, get the the power company to permit and install a podium for power on site, run power to the foundation, connect the power to the house, engineer a foundation, excavate, get two different sized steel wet plates fabricated, pour said foundation with wet plates mounted all at the same elevation in twenty-five precise locations, hire a crane, hire rigger, hire a welder, build a retaining wall because the dropoff from house to ground level was higher than expected, insulate the crawl space on my own by watching a YouTube video to learn how to load .22 caliber cartridges into a ramstead gun and shoot two and a half inch nails through insulation board into my foundation, badger a supply company until they finally delivered the right insulation board, get them to take away the wrong insulation board they brought that was broken by the wind and scattered into pieces all over the property, find an illusive 3x3 foot crawlspace door, learn how to use a core drill to make a four and a half inch hole in my foundation to install a code required fan to vent the crawlspace that my engineer thought was a stupid requirement and failed to tell me about, figure out what the hell going on when the Honomobo project manager tells me the measurements you gave him of the now poured foundation are wrong, have a panic attack, review plans with engineer, realized the project manager was mistaken, scream into the void, get the last available short term rental license application that had a thirty-day expiration window to pass all inspections, coordinate all subcontractors needed on install day, check with the sheriff about parking semi-trucks on the road, rent a porta potty, rent a dumpster, have coffee and donuts for everyone, oversee the Honomobo install crew that didn’t need overseeing, pass a blower test, pass state inspection, pass septic inspection, build a wooden curb to cover protruding rebar for an unpoured patio, build a temporary front door landing that could theoretically be be permanent so as to pass final county inspection, get a certificate of occupancy, pass the county short term rental inspection on the very last day before it expired to get the very last available license so that I could rent the house to make money in order to no have immediately have to sell, pour the sidewalk and patio.

Between all the licenses I already carry for my current business endeavors in different states, I'm not too keen on adding another set of licenses I would need to possibly study, apply for and take a test for then maintain with CE credits in an industry I'm not even sure I want to take on with any meaning volume.  

For those curious, if this applies to them, just follow these general principals: To qualify for the Section 121 exclusion you must: Must live in the home in the past 2 of the 5 years 24 months non consecutive required Must have owned the home for at least 2 years Only one spouse needs to meet the ownership testBoth spouses need to meet the use test Neither spouse has excluded a gain / used section 121 in the past two years Must file jointly for the 500k exclusion

I may switch to a 5% conventional loan to avoid the risk of failing the self-sufficiency test.

@Susan Thelen it’s likely easiest you do this in excel so you can easily modify variables and test the NPV sensitivity.

Unfortunately, now I'm realizing house hacking might not even be a thing with the new test they are doing in 2023.

In short you hire a lead testing specialist.

Stress test your capex, occupancy rates, rent rates, etc

Furthermore, should any tenant request that mold be tested by a laboratory or a mold “remediation specialist,” costs of such tests will be completely borne by the tenants.