Plunging Home Prices, Fleeing Companies: Austin’s Glow Is Fading
- Oracle is moving to Nashville to be closer to health sector
- Austin suffering a slowdown in growth after pandemic boom
Even a slowing Austin economy is still hot enough to be the envy of a lot of other places.
Photographer: Sergio Flores/BloombergOracle Corp. is moving its headquarters out of the city. Tesla Inc. is pulling back after a rapid expansion. Almost a quarter of commercial office space is vacant, and nowhere in the country have residential real estate prices fallen further from their pandemic peak.
Austin, the cosmic cowboy paradise that became a Covid-era economic superstar as it lured Elon Musk and a host of California refugees with its low taxes and sunny weather, had become accustomed to a steady drumbeat of good news. But lately that’s changed. And on Tuesday, Larry Ellison announced that his software company will shift its headquarters from the Texas capital to Nashville, Tennessee. It was a brief marriage — Oracle only arrived in Austin in 2020 — but getting jilted is never easy.