The New York Times Magazine 57Black has been declining for decades. Many of
those selling homes in the city were moving to
the parched suburbs of Pfl uggerville, Butta and
Bastrop. Or they were moving on to the next phase
of life, aging into retirement or nursing homes.
In the late spring, Mau fl ew in from Southern
California, where he works as a mortgage bro-
ker, to help with the renovation. He was clearing
trash in the front yard when a young man walked
by and asked if he needed help. As they worked
alongside each other, the man mentioned that
his girlfriend was helping the woman next door.
The woman said she’d sell her home for between
$200,000 and $250,000, he said.
‘‘We’re like, ‘Whoa, that’s supercheap,’ ’’ Smith
told me. So she went over to the run-down yel-
low house, which seemed to be made of little
more than splinters and asbestos. The owner,
Maria Saldaña, was in her late 60s and partially
blind and spoke little English. An orange Home
Depot fi ve-gallon bucket with a toilet seat
on top sat beside her bed, because the toilet
didn’t work. She was eager to sell and asked for
$210,000. Smith agreed. Micah Domingues —
Smith’s employee at her Airbnb management
company and her middle daughter’s 28-year-old
boyfriend — was interested.
Before the sale closed, one of Saldaña’s sons
moved her into an aff ordable senior living facili-
ty. He vaguely described where it was located so
that Smith and Domingues could visit her and
fi nalize the sales contract. After studying the
map, Domingues and Smith drove to the most
likely complex, but the receptionist didn’t think
Saldaña had arrived. So the two started knock-
ing on doors there, rapping, rapping, rapping as
instructed by Saldaña’s son, who told them to
continue to knock so that she could follow the
sound. She opened the third door they tried. She
was alone and unfamiliar with her surroundings,
so Smith and Domingues led her by the hand
around the room.
‘‘You have a new couch, and it’s over here,’’ Smith
said, helping her grasp the cushions. ‘‘Here’s your
table, and there’s a box of cereal on top of it.’’
‘‘There’s cereal?’’ Saldaña said. ‘‘I have a little
m i l k .’’
Smith poured milk and cereal into a bowl, and
Saldaña dug in as if she hadn’t eaten all day. The
air-conditioning was too cold for Saldaña, and so
before leaving they led her out onto the patio she
didn’t know she had and brought out a chair so
she could sit in the sun.
In the end, the sale fell through. There was a
cloud on the title. Saldaña had been married, and
although her husband was dead, he had grand-
children from a previous marriage who poten-
tially could claim a share of the property, and
two of them wouldn’t sign off. Micah, who had
been so excited to purchase his fi rst property, told
me that by the end, ‘‘I had no more emotions.’’
Given his budget — $300,000 was his upper limit
— he worried he’d have to wait a long time before
stumbling upon another off -market house.Real estate agents have a saying: ‘‘There’s a buyer
for every house, but there might not be a house
for every buyer.’’ That’s the defi nition of a sell-
er’s market — and a pithy indictment of the way
America subsidizes homeownership, in an era
when a majority of Americans are utterly shut
out of it. All the changes that Covid brought
to the market have only made things worse. It
doesn’t exclude just those who can’t muster all-
cash off ers, or those without the fi nancial cushion
to take on the risk of losing a large option fee
or forgoing an inspection. It also disadvantages
those who are unable to drop everything to make
a play for properties. In the Covid-era Austin mar-
ket, there was seldom a house for anyone who
couldn’t house-hunt full time.
In keeping with seasonal trends, September
2021 brought an easing in the market, both in Aus-
tin and nationwide — but the city’s median sale
price was still its highest on record for a Septem-
ber. The Case-Shiller home price index reported
that the August 2021 year-over-year appreciation
was 19.8 percent nationwide: ‘‘That’s just an astro-
nomical pace of price appreciation,’’ Jeff Tucker,
a senior economist at Zillow, told me. ‘‘The only
remotely comparable points in time in the modern
era of low infl ation were late 2005, when price
appreciation peaked in the 14 percent range for
many months, and 2013,’’ when prices fi nally began
to rebound after the Great Recession. ‘‘And again,
there it didn’t quite crack 11 percent,’’ Tucker said.
As for Drew and Amena, things were still dire
a month before Drew had to report to work in
Austin. Amena began fl irting with the idea of
renting, but friends of hers were having as much
diffi culty fi nding a rental in Austin as she was with
buying. Renters were off ering $500 more than the
monthly asking price and signing two-year con-
tracts. Some were off ering an entire year up front.
Amena applied to four or fi ve, and was rejected
on all of them.
But two days later, miraculously, she and Drew
were under contract to buy. The home had taken
extra clicks to be located on Zillow because it was
for sale by owner. It was smaller than they had
wanted — 1,200 square feet, about the same size
as their unit in Bed-Stuy. But it had a guest room
for Amena’s parents, and the master bedroom
was at the back of the house looking onto a huge
backyard with a mature fi g tree. They could build
a home offi ce, they fi gured — or a home gym or
a rentable backhouse.
It was also in Windsor Park, a sleepy commu-
nity of ranch houses that they’d come to love. The
neighborhood was so close to so many major high-
ways that it was no more than 20 minutes away
from almost all of the major tech campuses. At
$525,000, it was listed higher than comparableAustin
(Continued from Page 43)
homes, but Drew and Amena had learned their
lesson. They bid $50,000 over asking with an expe-
dited fi ve-day option period.
‘‘I think, maybe, it’s looking good,’’ Gilchrist said
shortly after they submitted. ‘‘The guy is currently
asking whether or not you will water and harvest
the potatoes in their backyard for them once you
close and then share the potato harvest.’’
‘‘We will take a potato-cultivating class if that’s
what he wants us to do,’’ Amena said.
Amena and Drew went under contract, having
seen only photos of the house online and a video
shot by Gilchrist. The backyard was recently
added to the fl ood zone, meaning they’d have to
pay for a FEMA-approved fl ood-insurance policy.
While talking to their lender, they also learned
that the city wouldn’t let them add anything to
the backyard — a heartbreaker.
With two days left on her option period, Amena
fl ew to Austin for 24 hours. Gilchrist picked her up
at the airport and drove her directly to the home.
She walked through the low-slung rooms with
their boxy windows and opened every drawer,
closet and cabinet. She FaceTimed Drew: The liv-
ing and dining area was cramped, but the owners,
who were moving with their two children 30 min-
utes south of Austin to Niederwald, where they
could aff ord more square footage and more out-
door space, had large furniture. Most important,
the house didn’t smell, and it was theirs if they
wanted it. They would redo the bathroom and
reconfi gure the kitchen. It would work.
The home was still under renovation when
they moved in, in July. And it would be for quite
some time, because houses weren’t the only thing
in short supply during the pandemic: The same
was true of appliances, cabinets, vanities, sinks
and shower heads. In October, they still didn’t
have kitchen counters. They were creatively lay-
ing cardboard and cutting boards atop the open
cabinets. ‘‘It’s actually convenient from the stand-
point of the silverware drawer,’’ Drew told me.
‘‘You don’t have to open anything,’’ Amena said.
‘‘You just reach in and grab.’’
But even before they were settled in, Amena
couldn’t see staying in Austin long term. The
problem with Austin wasn’t that housing deals
sometimes hinged on potatoes. (The owners har-
vested them and left Amena and Drew a small
bounty, which was reportedly delicious.) The
problem, they felt, was that the city seemed too
staid, too homogeneous, too white — and each
sale in this crazy real estate market seemed to
be making it even more that way. When it came
time to celebrate Drew’s 40th birthday, they
considered a number of destinations: Mexico,
Cuba, Portugal. But in the end, the place they
most wanted to go was New York.
‘‘I still miss Brooklyn — I kind of want to move
back,’’ Amena said, her voice echoing off the bare
walls and hardwood fl oors of her empty new
home. ‘‘To be honest, the Austin housing market
was a little demoralizing.’’