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- BG Reads 2.24.2025
BG Reads 2.24.2025
🟪 BG Reads - February 24, 2025
Bingham Group Reads
Presented by:
February 24, 2025
âś… Today's BG Reads include:
🟪 Major warm-up for the week ahead in Central Texas (KVUE)
🟪 Austin-area housing market poised for another stable year, experts say (Austin American-Statesman)
🟪 New text message scam targeting drivers, TXDOT say (Fort Worth Star-Telegram)
🟪 Texas A&M regents may soon decide the university system’s next leader (Texas Tribune)
🟪 Federal workers confront mass confusion as Musk’s deadline to list accomplishments looms (Associated Press)
Read On!
[CITY OF AUSTIN]
[AUSTIN METRO NEWS]
âś… Major warm-up for the week ahead in Central Texas (KVUE)
The coldest air of the winter is now in the rearview mirror for us here in Central Texas, and now we look ahead to a dramatic warm up with no signs of additional arctic air or wintry precipitation.
In fact, high temperatures most days this week will be in the 70s, with some parts of Central Texas even making it into the 80s… 🟪 (LINK TO FULL STORY)
âś… Austin-area housing market poised for another stable year, experts say (Austin American-Statesman)
Steady as she goes. That about sums up the 2025 outlook by real estate experts for the housing market in the Austin metro area, a five-county region stretching from Georgetown to San Marcos. Peering into their crystal balls, several leading experts who have tracked the ups and downs of the Central Texas real estate market for years, even decades, foresee stable conditions this year.
They predict the 2025 housing landscape could mirror last year's, as more normal trends continue in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic era buying frenzy, when multiple offers, often well above asking price, were common.
Those expected trends include home prices remaining relatively flat; a steady supply of housing; predictable mortgage interest rates; and consistent sales, all factors that should help better inform decisions for both buyers and sellers.
In short, barring unforeseen local, national or global events, experts say this year's local housing market could look like a repeat of 2024's.
“2025 market activity will likely look similar to trends observed in 2024 with the median sales price and closed sales hovering between a range of 5% up or down year-over-year," Clare Knapp, housing economist for the Austin Board of Realtors, said recently.
"This stability will give homebuyers and sellers clear expectations to plan their next steps with greater confidence."… 🟪 (LINK TO FULL STORY)
âś… Downtown Commission wants all-new plan to address needs of city core (Austin Monitor)
The Downtown Commission has recommended the city pursue a complete rewrite of the Downtown Austin Plan rather than making updates and smaller changes to a document that commissioners say doesn’t reflect the needs of the city’s core. The combination of increasing population, mobility challenges, overlapping redevelopment projects and other significant changes to the area are behind the decision for an update to the original plan that was adopted in 2011.
The recommendation, which was unanimously approved, highlights the need for economic modeling of different land use options throughout the downtown region to ensure that new development is sustainable and provides benefits for the city.
The need for a clear implementation strategy was a major concern in the recommendation, which noted: “Keeping in mind that municipal plans frequently exist solely as aspirations and are not implemented in any effective manner or at all, and in order to ensure effective use of city resources, the DAP should specifically identify a funding mechanism for implementation and include the creation of a single city entity with sufficient authority to ensure cohesive, effective implementation of the DAP and keep the DTC informed of its progress in developing the DAP Update.”… 🟪 (LINK TO FULL STORY)
✅ Under threat of a federal freeze, city staff says they’re staying the course on infrastructure grants (Austin Monitor)
City staff made the case against panic to City Council’s Mobility Committee during an update on the state of Austin’s pending federal infrastructure grants, which some believe may be threatened by President Donald Trump’s executive orders to freeze all federal grants, during their regular meeting on Feb. 20.
Richard Mendoza, director of the city Department of Transportation and Public Works, and Carrie Rogers, intergovernmental relations officer, gave a joint presentation that broke down grants into two lately crucial categories: executed and pending.
Rogers said that the grants in the former category “may be on stronger footing” because the federal government has signed legally binding agreements to provide the funds. However, the pending grants, which have not formally been “executed” or signed, would be theoretically easier to revoke… 🟪 (LINK TO FULL STORY)
âś… Developers pitch 257-acre 'destination' project in Hutto (Austin Business Journal)
Developers are in the early stages of planning a 257-acre project at the southeast end of Hutto that one official said would be "both a gateway and a destination" for the fast-growing Austin suburb.
Austin-based Capland Development LLC – previously known as Harris & Straub LLC – and landowner Steven Wolfe are behind what's being called Gateway at Hutto.
It's currently located in the city's extraterritorial jurisdiction at the corner of the East Wilco Highway and County Road 137.
The development team gave an initial presentation to the Hutto City Council about the project on Feb. 18. The developers plan to bring it back for entitlements at a later date… 🟪 (LINK TO FULL STORY)
[TEXAS NEWS]
✅ Texas A&M regents may soon decide the university system’s next leader (Texas Tribune)
The Texas A&M University System Board of Regents could name its pick Monday for who should lead the sprawling collection of 11 universities and eight state agencies.
The board is meeting all-day in Houston, with the potential to vote on a sole finalist for chancellor, according to a public meeting posted on the university system’s website. The Texas Tribune has learned that the regents have narrowed their nationwide search to five candidates, including some prominent political names.
One individual with knowledge of the process confirmed the five names to the Tribune. A second person was able to confirm four of the five names. The candidates are Texas Comptroller Glenn Hegar, Texas A&M Foundation President Tyson Voelkel, University of Alabama President Stuart Bell, State Rep. Trent Ashby, R-Lufkin, and U.S. Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Austin… 🟪 (LINK TO FULL STORY)
âś… Reeling Texas Democrats get a rare sight: Their national chair (New York Times)
Defeats across the once solidly blue Rio Grande Valley. Shrinking margins in big Democratic cities like Houston and Dallas. Lost seats in the State House. The drubbing that Texas Democrats took in the 2024 election was bad enough to leave any party stalwart feeling deflated.
After all, a yearslong belief that demographic shifts, population growth and rapid urbanization had Democrats on the cusp of flipping the nation’s most populous Republican state was seemingly in tatters after November.
Yet the newly elected chair of the Democratic National Committee, Ken Martin, made Texas one of the first stops this week on his first swing through the country. And the message he carried was the opposite: Texas, the second-largest state, could still be a linchpin for the national party’s revival. “The future of the Democratic Party runs through Texas,” Mr. Martin said in an interview in Houston, pointing to national shifts in population away from Democratic coastal strongholds and toward the South. “We are here right now to start laying down the foundation.”
Mr. Martin spoke on Wednesday between meetings with local Democratic activists — hearing about the need for year-round investments in campaign infrastructure — in the same Houston hotel where Senator Ted Cruz celebrated his re-election victory over a well-funded, well-regarded Democratic challenger, Colin Allred, just a few months earlier.
Texas remains a tall hill for Democrats to climb, so Mr. Martin’s pitch this week says as much about the party’s struggles nationally as it does about its hopes for flipping the state. With once solidly Democratic states like Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania now competitive, and population continuing to shift toward the Sun Belt, Democrats need to cultivate new ground.
For now, that ground does not seem particularly fertile in Texas. Republicans control all branches of state government, a Democrat has not been elected to statewide office since 1994, and the party has shown few signs of being able to organize effectively across a vast and expensive state. Demographics were once seen as political destiny in Texas, where a plurality of residents now are Hispanic.
The state has five of the nation’s 15 largest cities — Houston, Dallas, San Antonio, Austin and Fort Worth — and its population has been growing more diverse. Those trends, Democrats believed, would eventually shift Texas from red to blue… 🟪 (LINK TO FULL STORY)
âś… New text message scam targeting drivers, TXDOT say (Fort Worth Star-Telegram)
A new text message scam is targeting Texas drivers, officials with the Texas Department of Transportation said. Customers who use the TxTag toll tag system have reported receiving text messages about having a due or past due balance, officials said.
The SMS phishing scams, also known as smishing, have been occurring since April 2024 but have recently spiked, according to a TxDOT statement.
Department officials say they are working to get any fraudulent websites taken down. TxTag will not send any text messages about payments or past due balances, and legitimate text messages regarding TxTag accounts will come from 22498, officials said… 🟪 (LINK TO FULL STORY)
[US and World News]
✅ Federal workers confront mass confusion as Musk’s deadline to list accomplishments looms (Associated Press)
Confusion and chaos loom as hundreds of thousands of federal employees begin their workweek on Monday facing a deadline from President Donald Trump’s cost-cutting chief, Elon Musk, to explain their recent accomplishments or risk losing their jobs.
Musk’s unusual demand has faced resistance from several key U.S. agencies led by the president’s loyalists — including the FBI, State Department, Homeland Security and the Pentagon — which instructed their employees over the weekend not to comply.
Lawmakers in both parties said that Musk’s mandate may be illegal, while unions are threatening to sue. Trump over the weekend called for Musk to be more aggressive in his cost-cutting crusade through the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, and posted a meme on social media mocking federal employees who “cried about Trump and Elon.”… 🟪 (LINK TO FULL STORY)
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