Let's Be Real: The 7 Biggest Problems With Living in Austin, Texas

I love this city. I was born here, raised here, and I've spent my career selling Central Austin real estate. I'm not planning on moving away, ever, but the country lifestyle is starting to appear rosier. That's exactly why I get to say what follows.

Austin Texas has changed. It is constantly evolving with the modern times, for better or worse.  Here are the seven things that perturb and grind on me the most, counting down to the one that bothers me the most — with real examples pulled from my own first hand life history account.

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7. A City of Strangers

In the 1990s, Austin had a small-town feel. You knew people, and you knew where they came from — the family, the industry their parents worked in, the high school they went to. Leaving the house meant running into a familiar face at the post office, the dry cleaner, or the coffee shop.

These days, with the city population well past 1 million, I hardly know anyone. I'm lucky if I recognize two people in a day.

Austin is full of transplants who came for a job or a lifestyle. Plenty of them are fun and energizing. But people live here two to five years or seven years, the job transfers, and they're gone. You finally get to know somebody, and then they're out. The city has become a giant revolving door.

I'll admit I sometimes think the tech bros use Austin as a substitute for their lack of a personality.

As a local Unicorn, I've come to accept this as the new normal. So I've made my peace with it: enjoy people while they're here, and wave when they go.

6. Taxes, Taxes, and More Taxes

For the record: I'm a Democrat, and I currently serve as a volunteer Travis County Democratic precinct chair for my neighborhood — St. Elmo, SoCo, Battle Bend, 78745, close-in South Austin. I'm strongly pro-gay-rights, pro-choice, pro path-to-citizenship, pro-freedom, pro-legalized-gambling, pro-legal-marijuana, and lined up with most of the liberal, progressive social agenda.

But.

The City of Austin keeps maxing out its ability to tax real estate homeowners through property taxes. There was even a special election asking voters for permission to tax us further. And in a city that leans liberal by something like 70 to 75 percent, that measure still failed at the ballot box. That should tell all of us, something.

I personally don't know exactly who to blame. Maybe it's the State of Texas siphoning Austin dollars through  "recapture" practices or the Public School Robin Hood Act? Maybe it's the city treating its budget as bottomless. Probably some of both.

I'm going to stay a strong Democrat. But raising taxes on everyday citizens is where I get off the bus. Tax the billionaires. Tax the corporations. Give the rest of us a break.

5. The Rising Cost of Absolutely Everything

For most of my career selling Central Austin residential real estate, I could tell visitors, clients, and would-be Austinites something honest: "The real estate might be pricey, but everything else here is cheap."

Fifteen or twenty years ago, that was true. A Lone Star tallboy ran two or three bucks. A Lone Star and a shot of whiskey topped out around five. You could get a terrific brunch at the Omelettry on Burnet Road for fifteen bucks. You could swing by Magnolia Cafe on Lake Austin Boulevard, order the Mag Mud for about eight bucks and a drip coffee for two or three. Magnolia Cafe even had a menu item called "The Economical."

In 2026, that pitch would be a lie.

Drip coffee hovers around four dollars, with free refills if you're lucky. Going out to eat is genuinely expensive. Concert tickets have skyrocketed — a live show used to run ten or twenty bucks, and a real headliner maybe fifty. Now fifty bucks for a semi-famous act counts as a deal. Then you buy one beer at the venue and you're out another ten plus.

You see where I'm going. Simply leaving your house costs too much. The one place that still feels fair to me is H-E-B, which I think does an honest job keeping prices obtainable for regular Austin families.

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4. Austin Businesses Have Gone Overboard on Enabling Dog Owners.

I stopped at a coffee shop near Zilker Park recently, hoping to drink a mug of coffee in peace. No such luck. In maybe 1,200 +/- square feet of space, I counted somewhere between seven and ten dogs on leashes — everything from tiny cute lapdogs to one legitimate pit bull.

Come on. Should someone really be able to walk an oversized dog into a cramped Central Austin coffee shop or commercial public place of business? Is that safe? Is it sanitary? Do you want to relax next to a large dog barking one and half feet feet from your diminutive spot?

Is leaving the dog at home no longer an option? Why does every errand require bringing an optimistically domesticated animal along and making the rest of us share the room with it?

My honest guess: commercial businesses want the money $$, and dog owners spend it.

The City of Austin TX banned smoking inside bars and restaurants once we decided the tradeoff wasn't worth it. Maybe it's time for the same conversation about dogs — patios and outdoor areas, yes; interior dining rooms and coffee shops, no.

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3. Traffic, Overpopulation, Construction, and Nowhere to Park

I bike, I walk, and I take Ubers whenever I can. Then you become a parent, and you learn exactly how much gear a small child requires: strollers, cribs, bags, diapers, milk bottles, snacks, backup snacks. Once there's a kid in the picture, you need a car seat and a trunk just to get across town.

Traffic in Central Austin is a constant now. Lamar, South Congress, MoPac, I-35 — it's everywhere, and it's all under construction. Where there were three lanes, there are two. Where there were two, there's one.

The crowding is something else, too. Try running the Town Lake hike-and-bike trail on a Saturday morning. It feels like rush hour in Manhattan, NYC. People, dogs, strollers, large groups everywhere you look.

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2. We're Demolishing the Buildings That Made Austin, Austin

Character-filled — sometimes genuinely historic — buildings in prime Central Austin locations are getting scraped to the slab so developers can put up high-rise mixed-use boxes stocked with national chain retailers.

"Keep Austin Weird" was never just a bumper sticker. It meant keep Austin local. Buy local. Support the mom-and-pop shop down the street. The relentless flow of money and new arrivals into this town has exposed the ugly side of real-estate capitalism.

And look, I sell real estate for a living. I need deals to close. I'm pro-capitalism. But it stings when perfectly usable buildings with classic, cool architecture get leveled and replaced with glass slop.

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1. The Homelessness Crisis Is Out of Control.

The homelessness crisis downtown and across Austin has gotten away from us. In earlier decades, people experiencing homelessness in the ATX mostly panhandled, asked for food, and kept to themselves. They were unobtrusive harmless hippies with dreadlocks. Today the encounters are different. They're confrontational, and often flat-out unsafe. Some people think the boosted potency of current drugs is to blame.

Two things happened to me in a single week.

Example #1: The barbershop. I was getting a standard haircut at an affordable shop in South Austin, on the 290 frontage road near Mencheca. A shirtless man started trying to force his way through the front door. Luckily that door stays locked, and the two meek women working the shop wisely refused to buzz him in. I don't want to think about how that plays out for the barbers or the customers or heck me, if they'd opened it.

Example #2: Second Street. I headed downtown to check out Card Vault, the new Tom Brady sports card shop. Expensive, but pretty cool, with a few affordable pieces and some nice autographed memorabilia. Afterward I sat down for lunch on Second Street. Watching people cruise that block used to be one of the great carefree urban pleasures in this town.

Not that day. Near the end of my meal, a shirtless crazed man came up and insistently asked if he could eat my food. I said no thanks. He barreled past me anyway, straight onto the restaurant patio and went directly for my plate. I got up, walked out, and peacefully let it go.

Two incidents. One week. That's a problem that is genuinely and physically in our faces. 

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George Vance McGee is a Broker Associate with Austin Silent Market Realty, specializing in silent and off-market residential properties across Austin. 512.657.9281 | georgevance@gmail.com | www.AustinSilentMarket.com