Bloomberg by Sophie Alexander 3/11/2022
Fans and investors are flocking to the area near the billionaire’s SpaceX launch site, bringing both opportunity and angst for locals. Evan Wood routinely gets text messages from strangers asking if he wants to sell his South Padre Island condo, which boasts a direct view of Elon Musk’s Texas spaceport six miles to the south.
“There's no way I would even consider it,” said Wood, a software engineer and space enthusiast based outside of Austin, who bought the condo during the pandemic after visiting with his family. To him, it’s “mind-blowing” to see what Musk’s SpaceX is doing at its launch site near the Gulf of Mexico.
Over in Brownsville, the first semblance of civilization you hit when exiting the barren 20-mile road from SpaceX’s Starbase, similar tales are common. Bruno Zavaleta, a local real estate agent, had one client drive 16 hours from Atlanta and snap up two properties in cash the day he arrived. That buyer is now under contract for two more homes that are being built in a development called Palo Alto Groves, which touts its location as “home of Elon Musk’s SpaceX Control Center.”
These types of things didn’t used to happen in Cameron County, affectionately referred to as the 956 (its area code) by locals, which has the kinds of small towns where everyone knows everyone, one in four people lives in poverty and kids often grow up to leave and never come back. Now money and people are pouring into the Texas border region, thanks to the world’s richest man and his promise of a space revolution.
SpaceX has been in the area for years. But the craze really intensified, as these things do with Musk, after a tweet:
“Please consider moving to Starbase or greater Brownsville/South Padre area in Texas,” Musk wrote in March 2021 to his millions of followers, 10 minutes before he promised $10 million to Brownsville’s downtown revitalization and $20 million to its Cameron County schools.
Almost a year later, the Cameron County economy has been transformed by Musk supporters, space junkies and investors betting on his name. Zavaleta says it was that tweet that spurred his client to jump in his car and buy Brownsville houses. The city — located on the Mexico border, with a $39,000 median household income — has a new identity as the “gateway to Mars.” Some locals are embracing the opportunity. Others are protesting the influx of wealth, fearing that the future of the area doesn't include them.
“Literally overnight, our market went nuts,” said Laurie Howell, a real estate agent in the South Padre area who sold Wood his condo. “One tweet, it changed everything.”
More:
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-03-11/how-an-elon-musk-tweet-is-fueling-a-boom-near-the-texas-home-of-spacex
