Bob Templeton with Zonda Education provided the board of trustees with a first quarter 2025 demographic update during the June 27 board meeting, which included housing data for the district.
The overview
According to Zonda data, PfISD ranks 10th out of 20 area districts such as Austin, Hutto and Georgetown ISDs in annual closings. The Q1 2025 report showed that, annually, PfISD had:
- 746 annual single-family home starts
- 795 annual single-family home closings
- 363 vacant or under construction homes in inventory
- 1,383 vacant developed lots
- 10,088 future lots
Diving in deeper
Per Zonda data, the Dessau Elementary School zone is building the most single-family homes with 227 annual home starts, followed by the Pflugerville Elementary zone with 124 annual starts and Barron Elementary with 115 annual starts.
The other 19 elementary zones all had between zero to 62 annual starts.
Dessau also leads in the number of annual closings and number of homes under construction and in inventory.
The east side of the district has a significant amount of vacant land that will likely turn into developments in the future, Templeton said.
"You do have some vacant land, so the district will have a very steady amount of single-family construction for the foreseeable future," Templeton said. "It's just the ups and downs because of economic concerns and interest rates."
- Greenwood had 187 annual closings
- Lisso had 139 annual closings
- Blackhawk Ridge had 103 annual closings
- Villages at Northtown Duplexes had 52 annual closings
- Village at Northtown had 50 annual closings
Zonda also tracks the yields of students per home each year, Templeton said, as well as the number of new students in homes.
However, these yields have "gone down everywhere" compared to ten years ago.
"Birth rates are lower—household sizes are smaller, so there's definitely a reduction in the number of kids that are coming into new homes," Templeton said.
What else?
In the Pflugerville-Wells Branch submarket, the multifamily occupancy rate is slightly higher than Austin at 83.8%. Rent rates in this region have also gone down 6.5-7%, Templeton said.
Rates are softening across the greater Austin area as half of all apartment companies are offering renters incentives to sign leases, he said.
PfISD has nearly 4,900 multifamily units under construction, 500 of which are single-family rental homes and about 170 that are age-restricted.
There are also more than 6,400 future multifamily units in various planning stages, of which over 300 are age-restricted.
"Those occupancy rates are not going to be going up anytime soon," Templeton said. "... There's a surge in multifamily across the Austin region."
