This is an empirical claim. It looks like new monthly permits are down from ~4k a month in 2021-2022 to ~3k a month. They're still up significantly from before 2020. The building boom has slowed but it's still elevated. Not particularly close to zeroing out.

The data is here: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/AUST448BPPRIVSA.

Not to mention, Austin could just make it cheaper to build to offset lower sell prices. Gruber et al estimate permits are 50% of an LA home's price. Fix permitting and rent goes down 50% by your assumptions that developers build until margins are 0.

Assume austin is only half as bad as LA, a 25% rent decrease would be incredible

Gruber's paper: https://evansoltas.com/papers/Permitting_SoltasGruber2026.pd...