Israel Linares is a senior market analyst at CoStar covering Austin. On this episode, host Abel Pacheco and Israel turn raw market data into decisions: how to read supply against demand, and why one metric will lie to you if you ignore the one beside it.
In this episode:
- The demand metric that matters, defined simply: net absorption is "the net change between move ins less move outs."
- Why a single number misleads. Austin white collar jobs grew about 20 percent since 2020, yet office sublease listings jumped 65 percent to an all time high, because headcount and space "doesn't correlate one to one like it used to."
- The supply caution that should bend a pro forma: about 35,000 units under construction, roughly 13 percent of inventory, which pressures rent growth and pushes vacancy up.
- How Abel underwrites against it: moving rent growth, expense growth, taxes, insurance, leverage, and interest rates all at once.
- Israel's rule that doubles as the operator's: be "an objective teller of what the data says."
Abel Pacheco is a San Antonio real estate operator who went from 8 single family houses to a share of roughly 1,500 apartment doors, and now works as a fractional Chief AI Officer helping small and mid sized businesses put the back office on autopilot.
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