Local Apartment Market Headed for a Slowdown

The apartment market in Central Texas is turning in renters’ favor, a new report said.

And it looks like the trend will hold for the foreseeable future as a wave of new complexes comes online, further reducing occupancy rates, the report said.

The region’s apartments were 91.4 percent occupied in the third quarter, down from 94.1 percent in the year-ago quarter and 91.6 percent in the second quarter of this year, according to Austin Investor Interests LLC, which tracks the market.

Although the drop from the previous quarter wasn’t big, it came in what is typically the strongest time of the year, when students move into campus-area apartments. It was only the second time in 15 years that occupancy has declined in the third quarter, the report said.

The average rent was $821 a month, flat from the previous quarter. Two experts are forecasting rents to decline 3 to 5 percent during the next 12 months.

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Newspapers Cited for Discriminatory Housing Ads

A federally funded fair housing enforcement effort by the Austin Tenants’ Council has riled officials of several small Central Texas newspapers, who say the council is unfairly targeting them and using the settlements to fund the nonprofit organization.

At least eight papers, most of them weeklies, have been cited by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development as violating the Fair Housing Act by publishing classified ads that discriminate against potential renters. The complaints were initiated by the tenants’ council as part of a grant program funded by HUD.

To read more in the Austin American Statesman, click here.

To read more in the Houston Chronicle, click here.