Texas & Louisiana City Scoop: Construction Starts in Austin
Total construction spending expected to drop 4% across the Austin area this year
Highway/bridge and public works projects forecast to fuel a large increase in non-building activity.
City Grill
Darrell Pearson
Partner, PBK
“The Austin metro area’s population growth in 2019 will surpass 60,000 for the ninth year in a row,” Pearson says. “This population growth has put additional pressure on the already crowded highway system and the housing market—the most significant impact likely exists in the construction industry.”
Although there appears to be enough general contractors to support the growth in the commercial, housing and school sectors, the challenge for the local industry remains the finite number of individual construction trades available to fulfill the demand, Pearson says. Thus, firms in Central Texas are having increased difficulty controlling construction costs and managing schedule challenges, he adds.
“With the pace of overall job creation remaining at nearly 3.5% in the greater Austin area, it is difficult to project when we will even see a modest slowdown in the next couple of years,” he says.
Pearson also foresees design firms and contractors being forced to recruit new talent from other parts of the country over the next couple years because of the significant shortage of available professionals within Texas.
