March 11, 2021 – 5 Minute Read
After recently being named the 2nd richest person in the world and moving to Austin himself, Tesla CEO Elon Musk has decided that Texas’s capital will be the headquarters of SpaceX, another company that he is the CEO of. Last year, he made the decision to build a $1 billion, 4 million-5 million-square-foot Tesla gigafactory in Austin which is under construction and scheduled to be completed by the end of 2021. Now, according to a recent job posting, Musk is seeking employees to help SpaceX create and run a “state of the art manufacturing facility” in Austin, which will be the latest project of his to begin operations in Texas.
SpaceX is a rocket producer whose mission is to work on the next generation of fully reusable launch vehicles that will be the most powerful ever built, capable of carrying humans to Mars and other destinations in the solar system. They have gained worldwide attention for making history by being the only private company capable of returning a spacecraft from low-Earth orbit as well as being the first private company to take humans to the International Space Station.
There is already a 4,000-acre state-of-the-art rocket development facility in McGregor, Texas that is used for testing SpaceX engines, vehicle structures and systems.
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The Austin location will be dedicated to Starlink, a SpaceX venture that aims to deliver stable and speedy broadband internet service around the world using a network of satellites, according to the job postings that refer to setting up said facility.
What does Musk’s decision to create a SpaceX facility in Austin mean for our real estate market? Building another huge facility will create a surplus of jobs for many people- which will create the need for many of them to purchase properties. The demand of buying houses is going to continue to increase, and considering the low inventory the Austin market already has – the prices of homes in the city are going to continue to increase as well due to high demand. We are eager to see how just low the inventory will go in Austin and how much that will influence the way properties are priced.