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- A nine-acre Austin estate last listed for $38.9 million just sold to an unknown buyer.
- The exact closing price is unknown, but the listing agent confirmed it was the most expensive home sale ever in the Texas city.
- Tech firms and executives have been flocking to Austin in the pandemic.
- Visit the Business section of Insider for more stories.
A nearly nine-acre estate in Austin that was last listed for $38.9 million just sold to an unknown buyer, breaking the city’s record for the most expensive home sale ever, V.L. Hendrickson reported for Mansion Global.
The seven-bedroom house sold in an off-market deal to a buyer who wished to remain anonymous, listing agent Kathryn Scarborough of Engel & Völkers Austin told Insider. Scarborough said she could not disclose the closing price but confirmed it was the priciest deal in the Texas city’s history. In Texas, property sale prices are not public record.
The 8.8-acre property sits on the shores of Lake Austin, about 10 miles from downtown Austin, according to a previous listing. It includes more than 665 feet of water frontage on the lake as well as a private lagoon, an outdoor infinity pool, and a three-story guest house that resembles a glass box and was once featured in Architectural Digest.
The glass-walled main residence is made up of two wings on either side of a central courtyard, with a 1,000-square-foot great room that's enclosed by glass on both sides.
A tech rush to Austin
With an influx of tech workers moving in during the pandemic, Austin has already been dubbed the next Silicon Valley.
Oracle is moving its headquarters to the Texas city and Tesla is building a new car factory there. Tech giants like Facebook, Google, and Apple are beefing up their office space in the growing tech hub. And tech executives including Dropbox CEO Drew Houston and Palantir cofounder and venture capitalist Joe Lonsdale have said they're moving to Austin. Tesla's Elon Musk said in December that he had moved to Texas but didn't specify where.
Julia Robinson/Reuters
As Natasha Solo-Lyons recently wrote for Insider, the flood of new residents has sent Austin's real-estate market into a "frenzy" of bidding wars and skyrocketing prices.
"There are hourlong lines to get into some open houses, and multimillion-dollar mansions in posh neighborhoods are trading hands in off-market deals," Solo-Lyons wrote.
In the ZIP code where Austin's recently sold priciest home sits, the typical home value is more than $1.3 million - up nearly 17% from this time last year, according to Zillow.