Austin ranks 3rd in high-tech jobs

Austin’s two notable tech markets, Northwest Austin and the Central Business District, are on different ends of the spectrum.

Austin’s high-tech occupiers have long tended to cluster in the Northwest suburban market, which recorded an 11.8 percent growth in average asking rents from 2Q 2013 to 2Q 2015. 

However, the average asking rate in the Northwest was 2.4 percent below the Austin metro-wide rate of $31.33 per annum at the end of 2Q 2015. 

The Austin CBD, which has more recently emerged as a high-tech submarket with more than 100 high-tech companies, has a rent premium of 28.6 percent.

In many leading tech markets, the high-tech software/services industry is even more dominant — high-tech companies accounted for 63 percent of major leasing activity in Austin through 2Q 2015, second only to Silicon Valley with 88 percent.