At a glance, I'm a bit skeptical. It looks like they're cherry picking the high point for rent (the COVID spike).

> "Rents fell. In December 2021, Austin’s median rent was $1,546, near its highest level ever and 15% higher than the U.S. median ($1,346)."

Of course having more housing should, all things equal, lower rent. But all things certainly weren't equal, especially during this time period.

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scarmig 7 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> In December 2021, Austin’s median rent was $1,546, near its highest level ever and 15% higher than the U.S. median ($1,346). By January 2026, Austin’s median rent had fallen to $1,296, 4% lower than that of the U.S. overall ($1,353).

For comparison, in San Francisco December 2021, the median one bedroom was $2810. In San Francisco March 2026, it was $3597, an increase of 28%.

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darth_avocado 7 hours ago | parent [-]

It is well known that there was a brief moment in time when people were abandoning San Francisco and “moving to Texas” (mostly Austin) that coincides when the rents peaked in Austin. I’d be not surprised if that was also the time when San Francisco rents were down.

We’re seeing a reversal in trend when SF is hot again and Austin is not. So not exactly a straightforward comparison. It could explain the SF-> Austin and back trend.

	▲	scarmig 3 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		So we've got point in time comparisons between Austin and itself; the change in delta between Austin and a particular city known for restricting housing; and the change in delta between Austin and national median rents. They all support the idea that increasing supply tends to decrease costs, which by a massive coincidence is what basic economic theory suggests. Of course, people can come up with an ad hoc explanation for why Austin's prices happened to decrease against each of those data points. But is there a single principled way to present the data that suggests increasing supply in Austin did not decrease costs?
	▲	Tiktaalik 6 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Yeah this would be the interesting thing to try to normalize the data against somehow.

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TulliusCicero 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

If you just compare it to other cities you can see that Austin did much better in prices.

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dmoy 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Idk about rent, but even as of a year or two ago, Austin metro housing index was lower than its 2016 level. Rent following a similar trajectory wouldn't be super surprising to me.

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2postsperday 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

You haven't factored in Inflation.