To predict the future impact of SpaceX’s IPO on local real estate, Austin resi brokers are looking back.
Picture it: Austin, 1997. In the course of a year, broker John Guerra sold 100 lots and 25 spec homes in Barton Creek, the upscale community south of Austin at the edge of the Texas Hill Country, the Wall Street Journal wrote at the time. The homes ranged from $700,000 to $2 million at a time when Austin’s median home price was $120,000.
Who was buying them? The Dellionaires: the newly liquid employees and former employees of Dell made instantly wealthy by the company’s 1988 IPO.
Even Austin resi brokers who weren’t around for the Dellionaire era know the lore. Older colleagues talk about the boost it provided Austin’s luxury real estate market and point to the time as indicative of how future blockbuster IPOs with ties to Austin could play out.
“We’re kind of wondering if that’s what we’re in for,” said Emily Waldmann, a Douglas Elliman agent in Austin.
On June 11, Elon Musk’s space tech company launched the largest IPO in history, instantly minting more than 4,000 new millionaires. Since Musk relocated the company from California in 2024, many of these millionaires live in Texas, specifically in the Rio Grande Valley, where SpaceX is headquartered, and around Austin, which is home to a SpaceX hub.
The two vastly different real estate markets are gearing up for the influx of wealth to ratchet up demand for luxury housing.
Brownsville’s new chapter
SpaceX employees and their families make up about 30 percent of Adriana Ana Garcia’s business as an agent with Keller Williams.
Employees relocating to South Texas to work there typically rent before buying. A handful of SpaceX employees live in the company town of Starbase. The rest are scattered throughout the Valley in Brownsville, Harlingen, McAllen and Mission.
Since SpaceX’s arrival, investment in the area has soared, with investors from the U.S. and Mexico buying rental homes, as the launch site draws a steady stream of tourists.
The Rio Grande Valley doesn’t have anything to compare this to.
In the region at the tip of Texas along the Mexico border, a $400,000 home is considered pricey, Garcia said. Properties priced up to $1 million are pretty rare, she said.
Zillow’s most expensive listing in Brownsville, the Valley’s largest city with a population of about 200,000, is asking $2.4 million, and it’s been on the market for two years. Of the 760 Brownsville listings, Zillow shows 11 single-family homes listed for over $1 million.
Due to the lack of inventory, the new SpaceX millionaires likely will have to build their own mansions.
Master-planned communities have already begun proliferating in the area, Garcia said. At Madeira, a 1,300-acre community in Brownsville, homes range from the mid-$300,000s to over $500,000. Tres Lagos in McAllen features homes starting at $440,000.
Austin fills out
The IPO will be less of a shock to Austin, which has an established luxury real estate market.
While SpaceX’s Central Texas hub is about 33 miles from downtown, Austin will still be the primary beneficiary of any real estate boost.
“If you’re a millionaire in Bastrop, you’re buying in Austin,” Walmann said.
She wasn’t around for the Dellionaire era, but based on what she’s heard about Austin’s tech-fueled ’90s real estate boom, she’s predicting most of the activity will be in the $3 million to $10 million range, as opposed to record-setting trades in the tens of millions.
“That’s what we saw in the Dellionaire era. Everyone did pretty well versus one headline marquee sale,” she said.
Austin has also become a haven for tech millionaires looking to avoid state income tax. She predicts the city’s luxury market could get a boost from these kinds of buyers made wealthy by the SpaceX IPO or future IPOs for artificial intelligence giants OpenAI and Anthropic.
Based on the tales of the Dellionaires, Walmann expects a marathon, not a sprint.
“It takes a minute for this to hit the market,” she said. “Maybe we see these things actually transacting in the fall.”
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