Austin, Texas is home to many different attractions with great food, shopping, and entertainment venues. Many think of Sixth Street as Austin's premiere hotspot, but there are several other interesting yet relatively overlooked areas in town. One of the m...

Many modern homes and condos are going up left and right in Austin, with local design and build companies behind the new residences. It is hard to pinpoint exactly why modern design is becoming so popular, but several factors possibly play a role. O...

While many timbres, like those which come from bowed strings and woodwinds, are readily recreated with synthesizers, percussive instruments are some of the most tricky to create convincing emulations of. Piano and harpsichord are most easily dealt with th...

Some streets lead to wherever it is you want to go. Some lead to surprises both bad and good. Some streets are destinations in themselves, stretches of thoroughfare where the journey itself is all that matters. South First Street between Riverside and ...

One of the most timely and costly home improvement projects any homeowner can take on is a kitchen makeover. Whether a homeowner desperately needs a kitchen revamp, or is tired of the dated look of the kitchen, there are several options to freshen up the...

Just north of Austin’s urban center lies the Crestview neighborhood, bordered by Anderson Lane to the north, Justin Lane to the south, North Lamar Boulevard to the east and Burnet Road to the west. In 1948, developer A.B. Beddow began building the Cres...

Lying just west of IH-35 and south of Riverside Drive is one of Austin’s most appealing neighborhoods, Travis Heights. Its rolling hills and winding roads have long been a haven for a diverse culture, with a mixture of housing to match: perfectly kept ...

The recent government-sponsored bailout of Bear Stearns, one of the top five lenders in the United States, has shocked traders and left investors cold. Despite the chilly reaction on Wall Street, secretly many are breathing a sigh of relief. While Bear St...

As the sub-prime mortgage crisis continues to unfold, new figures emerge from the Mortgage Banker's Association: A record .83. That means that, in three months, one out of one hundred homeowners have been foreclosed on. Because of America's size and diver...

During the subprime crisis we saw the advent of numerous bizarre loan products. In general the new loan products were designed to get people into houses they could not normally afford. As people started to default on their mortgages banks realized many ...

Many of the historic buildings in Austin are either privately owned, have been turned into modern-day businesses, or are open to the public in the form of museums. Luckily for those looking to actually live in such a building, even if for just one night,...

On March 14th, Bear Stearns, the fifth-largest investment bank in the United States, entered a period of insolvency. As growing lack of confidence in the firm's subprime exposure grew, other banks eventually refused to lend to the stricken company, which ...

For a long time, Austin has been considered the “Third Coast” in the film industry, with more filmmakers on the rise in Austin, and more Hollywood types coming to Austin to shoot their movies. One of the biggest proponents of the up and coming ...

More times than I can remember I had a buyer interested in a property think that I would be thrilled when I found out they didn't have a buyers agents. I'm not excited. In fact I would prefer that they had a buyers’ agent. Here are the reasons why: ...

With East Austin’s affordable housing prices and close proximity to downtown, it’s long been a hub for Austin’s musicians and artists. Over the years the different artists in East Austin started to work and collaborate with each other. Over time t...