Get Power Play<\/p>\n
A twice-weekly dive into the power players and moves driving business in Massachusetts, authored by long-time business columnists Shirley Leung and Jon Chesto.<\/p>\n
In Boston, Bisono said, all of his friends talked about moving; many of them already had. <\/p>\n
\u201cI was making just enough to live,\u201d said Bisono, who works at a large logistics company. In Austin, he said, \u201cI\u2019m paying less rent, and I\u2019m getting more.\u201d <\/p>\n
![\"Bisono](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/2AVI6F2T7EK75JOLE3UEVYK4SE.JPG\")
Bisono left Boston early in the morning on Sept. 17. Taylor Coester for The Boston Globe![\"Bisono](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/R5ZB35UZTD4WKSYC4QDXSQQLIQ.JPG\")
Bisono packed up his car in Boston on the morning of his move.Taylor Coester for The Boston Globe<\/p>\n
In Austin, jobs are up, rent is down, and there are cranes in the sky. It built housing at a faster rate than any other major American city between 2015 and 2024, a concerted push that has helped drive down rent prices while they\u2019ve soared in other markets. Austin has also become one of the country\u2019s fastest-growing job markets, expanding in many of the sectors that Boston holds dear, like life sciences<\/a> and clean tech<\/a>.<\/p>\n By the numbers, Austin and Boston have similar fundamentals: cities with young, educated, and specialized workforces, anchored in strong research institutions and hospitals. But Austin is growing while Boston is already a \u201cmature, self-sustaining ecosystem,\u201d said Didi Caldwell, a site selection consultant for businesses. It\u2019s getting harder for companies to recruit in expensive coastal cities, she said. <\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s been a bit of a paradigm shift. It used to be that people moved to locations because of the jobs they had,\u201d Caldwell said. \u201cNow, the companies are moving to where the people are.\u201d <\/p>\n Austin\u2019s advantages were apparent from the 48th floor of Bisono\u2019s new apartment building, as he took in the skyline while standing beside a shallow rectangular pool, stylish striped lounge chairs, and a cluster of verdant monstera plants. <\/p>\n Up here with the skyscrapers, the rooftop oases on puny six-story buildings look like kiddie pools, and the state Capitol building a Monopoly house. The speakers played lo-fi beats. For all this, Bisono\u2019s rent is $500 less than the cost of his tiny studio in Southie.<\/p>\n \u201cIf they told me Austin would be like this,\u201d he said with a grin, \u201cI would\u2019ve moved [earlier].\u201d<\/p>\n There are plenty of data-driven explanations for why people like Bisono are fleeing Boston for places like Austin. What\u2019s harder to quantify is the vibes. <\/p>\n What makes this city feel like it\u2019s thriving, feel like a cool place to be? Is it the plentiful food trucks, the reputation for good live music, the way everyone always seems to be paddle-boarding?<\/p>\n Bisono was starting to answer that question as he hit the pavement on his first weekend in Austin. His new apartment is blocks from Lady Bird Lake, along a 10-mile hike and bike trail so picturesque it can turn even the most reluctant into runners. It\u2019s a perfect fit for Bisono, a triathlete training for a 100 km ultramarathon later this year. <\/p>\n He\u2019d thought he might miss his runs along the Charles. Not so far. <\/p>\n There is no ready Boston equivalent to Bisono\u2019s new home on Rainey Street, best described as the perfect place to be 23: a dense expanse of bars and restaurants where you can stay out late dancing, hit a food truck, then start the next morning with a mimosa that includes a full bottle of champagne (served in a stein). Late at night, the music can be heard for blocks, no matter how powerful your white-noise machine. <\/p>\n On Bisono\u2019s first Saturday night in town, as UT won its home game, the streets were awash in burnt orange and inflatable longhorns, and the bars were screening the contest on enormous outdoor screens beneath enormous outdoor chandeliers.<\/p>\n Bisono and Ginebra don\u2019t drink. Still, by Saturday evening, Ginebra was ready to experience some of the city\u2019s nightlife. \u201cI just want to meet people,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n \u201cYou want to meet girls,\u201d corrected Niklas Knupper, another friend.<\/p>\n Rainey Street didn\u2019t always look this way. As recently as 20 years ago, the neighborhood was a quiet, largely Mexican-American enclave,<\/a> zoned for single-family homes. Decades earlier, Susana Almanza, 74, attended elementary school nearby, and she recalled a close, welcoming community with safe streets, where kids could play \u201ckick the can.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIt was an open place, and it was more family-oriented,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n Now, after years of development and regulatory changes, the neighborhood is unrecognizable. Two blocks from where Almanza went to school stands the tallest building in Texas, a combination residential-commercial-office tower of more than 1,000 feet<\/a>, so high it hurts your neck to look at it from street level.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s been a major gentrification process,\u201d said Almanza, director of PODER, a local social justice organization. \u201cThe backlash of all this high development, high-end housing \u2026 is the displacement that has taken the place of people who helped build the city and people who have been here for generations.\u201d<\/p>\n Some Austinites joke that the city was perfect the day they arrived and has been getting worse ever since. It\u2019s an acknowledgement that their once sleepy, quirky college town, home to a lively indie music scene and colorful one-story bungalows, has morphed into a glassy urban center, a hub for tech and talent. Austin\u2019s population has more than doubled since 1990.<\/p>\n Austin has been willing to accept the pain that rapid, large-scale housing development can inflict on quiet neighborhoods. The upsides are dramatic: After a COVID-era peak, Austin\u2019s housing costs have started to fall as more and more homes are built. Landlords are dangling discounts to secure tenants \u2014 Bisono and Ginebra got 10 weeks free in their luxury building \u2014 and asking prices<\/a> on homes have plummeted.<\/p>\n \u201cAustin has added housing at the fastest clip of any large city over the past decade, and all of that supply pushed up availability rates, so that now landlords have to compete for tenants instead of tenants competing for scarce units,\u201d said Alex Horowitz, a Pew researcher who has studied the city\u2019s policies. \u201cBig picture, Austin has made it easy to build housing, and it used to be difficult.\u201d<\/p>\n Unlike Boston, Austin has eliminated parking minimum requirements for new housing projects citywide. Officials have made it far easier to build accessory dwelling units and allowed multiunit dwellings on almost any lot where single-family homes are permitted. Near the UT campus and a stretch known as \u201cThe Drag,\u201d the city has raised the height maximum for buildings to as high as 300 feet, and thousands of new student apartments have sprung up. <\/p>\n \u201cThe contrast is awfully clear,\u201d Horowitz said. \u201cAustin has added a lot of housing, and Boston just hasn\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n Instead of requiring that a certain percentage of new units be set aside for affordable housing, as Boston does<\/a> through its inclusionary development policy, Austin offers perks<\/a> for developers who do so. The carrot works better than the stick because it spurs more construction overall, Horowitz said. Austin led the country in affordable housing construction in 2024, one study found<\/a>. <\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re just making it a little bit easier to build, a little bit easier to build, and thankfully, that has taken hold,\u201d said Greg Anderson, director of community affairs at Austin Habitat for Humanity and a former chair of the city\u2019s Planning Commission. <\/p>\n Growth begets growth. As the city has added more housing, it\u2019s also added more job opportunities. <\/p>\n \u201cFor decades, people would come to these amazing institutions of higher learning. They had such an amazing experience here, and they\u2019d say, \u2018I want to stay here in Austin, but there\u2019s no job,\u2019\u201d said Anderson, who has lived in the city almost 30 years and also teaches at UT.<\/p>\n Now, there\u2019s plenty of work in the city, he said. \u201cThey stay here because they finally can.\u201d <\/p>\n Jobs in the Austin metro area have grown 44 percent since January 2016 \u2014 compared with 8 percent in Boston \u2014 making it one of the country\u2019s fastest-growing local economies. The growth comes from both blue-collar and white-collar roles, largely in prized industries such as tech, life sciences, and advanced manufacturing. <\/p>\n Susan Davenport, head of the economic development agency Opportunity Austin, calls it a little \u201cTexas mecca.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re the capital city of one of the largest economies in the world \u2026 and it\u2019s still growing,\u201d she said. \u201cIt\u2019s a really good value proposition.\u201d<\/p>\n Recruiting is top of mind for one of Austin\u2019s growing businesses, Natera<\/a>, a biotech that was founded in Silicon Valley and has since moved its headquarters to the Texas capital. The company, known for its blood-based cancer testing, has 300,000 square feet of office space and sprawling labs in North Austin, along with a parking lot big enough to get lost in. <\/p>\n Why Austin? Part of it was the cost of the space, much more reasonable than the options in the Bay Area. Texas offered a more business-friendly environment than California, company leaders said. But in relocating, there were also the intangibles to consider. <\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re gonna need to attract talent to a place. We need to sell people on a town,\u201d chief financial officer Mike Brophy, himself a native Texan, recalled thinking. \u201cYou can really sell people on Austin.\u201d <\/p>\n Natera recently expanded here, announcing several hundred new jobs as it builds toward what the company says will be the largest sequencing facility in the world. The company still does much of its high-level research and development in California, and a few top executives work from Massachusetts.<\/p>\n Housing is top of mind as Natera\u2019s executives consider their workforce. When it comes to hiring accountants or shift workers for the lab, \u201cwe would never do that in Boston,\u201d Brophy said. \u201cI don\u2019t know where our hourly people would live.\u201d<\/p>\n The median household income in Austin, $94,000, is almost as high as Boston\u2019s $97,000, according to Census data. But in Austin, your dollar goes much farther<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cYou work a full shift here, you can buy a house, your kids can go to a decent school,\u201d Brophy said. \u201cAustin is pretty unique in that way \u2014 people can live here.\u201d<\/p>\n Driving on the highways in Central Texas, even within 30 minutes of the city, you\u2019ll pass signs for \u201cnew homes from the $280s.\u201d In nearby Bastrop, the median home sells for $328,000, according to Redfin.<\/a> From Boston, it takes a long drive west to find similar prices; Springfield, for one, has comparable home costs.<\/a><\/p>\n \u201cAt some point, when you\u2019re out in Western Mass., you might as well be in Austin,\u201d Brophy said.<\/p>\n Ginebra and Bisono both stayed with their Boston jobs when they moved to Austin, transferring within their companies. Both see the city as a better place to grow their careers, with options to change companies down the line or to expand their supplement business, TribeX. <\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m an entrepreneur,\u201d Ginebra said. \u201cI want to build a great business out here and meet really great people.\u201d He said many supplement brands like theirs are based in Austin, and he expects to benefit from networking and lower Texas taxes. The weather \u2014 more similar to the climate in the Dominican Republic, where both men grew up \u2014 didn\u2019t hurt, either. <\/p>\n If moving to a new city is like jumping into cold water, Bisono and Ginebra seem to be adjusting just fine. They\u2019ve made a home in their 18th floor apartment: a flatscreen resting against the brick wall; a balcony to drink their orange juice on; a large cabinet by the front door dedicated to packages of their supplements.<\/p>\n At Barton Springs that Saturday afternoon, the pool was a perfect dark turquoise, and swimmers lounged on the cement sides or floated on inner tubes in the deep end. Bisono and Ginebra made friends with a couple of other guys after Ginebra, a jiu jitsu devotee, recognized one as a fellow fighter. Soon, they were all chatting about the supplement brand. The pair seem to meet people everywhere they go. <\/p>\n When the conversation ended, Bisono grappled briefly with Ginebra, finally muscling him into the cold, clear water. Then he jumped right in, too.<\/p>\n Emma Platoff can be reached at emma.platoff@globe.com<\/a>. Follow her @emmaplatoff<\/a>.<\/p>\n![\"Kayakers](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/CSA43K3JCMYCPAAFX4OGV576KE.JPG\")
Kayakers enjoyed Lady Bird Lake in downtown Austin.Joel Angel Juarez for The Boston Globe<\/p>\n![\"Bisono's](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/4HK5HV3PMD4MXLW4KB3HD2M3BE.JPG\")
Bisono’s friend, Niklas Knupper, joked with Marino Ginebra at his and Bisono’s new apartment.Joel Angel Juarez for The Boston Globe<\/p>\n![\"People](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/6DJM4VDYA62XRZYWW7L44YKJVM.JPG\")
People explored South Congress Avenue in Austin.Joel Angel Juarez for The Boston Globe<\/p>\n![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/MOAGS6GEZLXZXLTM5QUAYXF5AM.JPG\")
A view of downtown Austin.Joel Angel Juarez for The Boston Globe<\/p>\n![\"Bisono](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/EYARIWMNLU2CTXXRQ5GRKOHUYE.JPG\")
Bisono picked up his packages at his new apartment\u2019s mailroom.Joel Angel Juarez for The Boston Globe<\/p>\n![\"Bisono](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/ZRY7TOCJIGGN67ISB2PYSHR64A.JPG\")
Bisono walked along the Congress Avenue Bridge, with the city’s skyline as a backdrop.Joel Angel Juarez for The Boston Globe<\/p>\n