The Future of El Paso Texas

The Future of El Paso Texas

Hi and welcome to Living in El Paso, Texas. My name is John Peña and in this episode we are going to talk about the future of El Paso. Thanks so much for joining us. My name is John Peña. I'm a real estate agent in El Paso, Texas with EXP and this YouTube channel is all about El Paso. Eat, sleep,

work, play. If that's what the kind of information that you're looking for, by all means please consider subscribing. Click that notification bell to be notified when new videos come out. And in this episode we are talking about a study that came out of UTEP, the University of Texas El Paso. My lovely

wife brought this to my attention. So grateful to her for that and it's pretty awesome because essentially UTEP released what they're calling the UTEP border region modeling project. And what this is, it's a business report on the border plex and the border plex is essentially what we call kind of El Paso

Juarez. That kind of business region includes you know United States and Mexico. We're gonna focus more on the El Paso side but if you hear people saying border plex, they're essentially talking about that kind of region that includes El Paso, United States, Juarez, Mexico. So this is a business report of the long-term

economic trends for the next 30 years. So essentially it kind of looks at 2019 all the way projecting 30 years into the future 2049. It's a very comprehensive plan done with a ton of smarter people than me at the university there. And so what I wanted to do was kind of share with you some of the major aha's that

they came up with. I'm gonna put a link to the actual report in the description so if you really want to dig into it and check it out you can do that for yourself. And otherwise let's go ahead and jump right into it. Okay so the first point I wanted to talk about was kind of demographics and population. So in 2019

our population here in El Paso was about 843,000. In 2049 they're projecting us to eclipse 1 million and be up to 1,092,000. So obviously in my humble opinion when the population is growing and increasing that certainly signs that the city itself is growing. And some other things to kind of back up that

idea. In 2019 it was estimated that there were about 283,000 households. Okay families living under one house. In 2049 it looks like that number is expected to climb to about 348,000. So in the report it also says that due to higher incomes the city's going to be able to sustain and be able to manage more households

because the incomes, the jobs, etc. will be there. We're going to talk about jobs. One other interesting note is that they said due to growth and especially the information technology sector that the enrollment in colleges in the county is expected to climb as well. So that seemed like a pretty good sign as well. Okay the

next section is about employment and a couple videos back I kind of talked about the El Paso job market and this really I think hopefully kind of solidifies some of those ideas and suggestions that I was putting out there. Please remember I am NOT a fortune teller and I could absolutely be wrong

as could the very smart people who put out this study. So just a disclaimer there. But in 2019 there were just over 449,000 jobs total employment. In 2049 that number is expected to go just above 591,000. And now this I thought was super interesting. They talked about a couple of the sectors that are expected to have

losses and then some of the sectors that are essentially supposed to have gains. And so I wanted to share those with you. So payrolls are expected to fall in these three areas. Manufacturing, retail, and federal military employment. And they talk about this they say manufacturing is becoming more capital intensive and

automation those darn robots allows it to reduce payrolls while increasing total output. So that's why manufacturing not just in El Paso but you know let's be honest everywhere in the world is probably adjusting and trending down. Retail trade employment is also expected to decline as a consequence

of e-commerce, episodic health concerns, automation. And then federal military employment is also projected to decline due in part to advanced technology that eliminates many labor-intensive tasks. So this could get into a heated conversation again like I said about those robots and the

computers kind of taking over and outsourcing some of those jobs. But like I said I'm just the messenger. Alright sectors in which the payroll is expected to increase go up. Healthcare and social services. We talked about that last time that you know my opinion was that health care is

a pretty good gig here in El Paso as in other places. Other areas where it's expected to rise, hotel and food services. There's actually a whole section in here about the number of hotels, the number of rooms that are going to be available, and they're higher and higher suggesting that more people are going to be

traveling to El Paso for business, for pleasure. So it would be make sense that hotels are going to do well as far as increasing employment numbers. Other sectors that are expected to have an increase in employment, finance, insurance, real estate, transportation. I was talking to a guy today and he just talked about

interstate I-10 as the golden highway I think he called it. I'd never heard that before but it does make sense because it is a pretty critical east-west interstate for the lower part of the country. And then also expected to increase warehousing. That is very obvious in one of the last videos where

I actually showed that Amazon warehouse distribution center going up. So some pretty interesting information as far as employment. Next category, personal income. And so now you have to keep in mind that over the next 30 years inflation is going to happen and so a dollar today is not going to be the same

thing as a dollar in 2049. Just like a dollar in 1950 was a lot more than it is now in 2020. So kind of keep that in mind here. So in 2019 the average personal income of somebody in El Paso was $31,000. Now in 2049 that's projected to be $136,000 and again now $136,000 in 2049 is not what it would be right now.

So keep that in mind but I think the important point is to see that percentage change so that from 2019-2024 there's a 4.4% increase and almost 5% and then a 5.1, 5.1, 5%. So I don't exactly know how those numbers trend with the national average but it does suggest that there will be a

healthy amount of income growth and throughout the report it talks numerous times about this idea that you know more households will be able to be sustained in the city because personal income will increase with the times so I think it does show this trend that you know as more and more business comes

here whether that's commercial whether it's you know the appreciation of real estate that all of these different factors are showing strong steady continuous growth so what they're saying essentially is that you know the numbers are continuing to trend and we certainly hope that that's the case for

all of America but I think we're all realistic to understand that that's not exactly the case some cities are going to fare well some cities not so much right and so I believe what the big takeaway of this report is is that the university essentially is saying you know things are looking good the numbers

are looking good for growth whether it's financial whether it's business whether it's population so take that those numbers with a grain of salt but again all of this projected growth does seem to bode well for our future. Okay commercial activity commercial activity in 2019 generated about twelve and a

half billion in in revenue in 2049 that number is expected to climb to forty three point three billion so a pretty significant increase and so one of the things I thought was pretty interesting I'm going to take right out of this thing and it says multi-billion dollar sales categories that year 2049 should

include food and beverage establishments as well as general merchandise and warehouse stores so what they're saying is food and beverage is expected to do well general merchandise warehouse stores and so those things you know should be doing multi-billion dollar sales growing demand for personal

automobiles and commercial lorries lorries 18-wheeler semi trucks so growing demand for personal automobiles and semi trucks translates into greater motor vehicle and parts plus gasoline sales that collectively top just under 12 billion in 2049 so if you're not from here you may not be aware of that

there's a pretty strong connection between America and Mexico when it comes to automobile sales and especially automotive parts so there are maquiladoras which are factories in Mexico that are you know employing lots of Mexican citizens to create and build not only automobiles but actually

automobile parts we there's a pretty strong transportation industry of you know at this point semi trucks railroad even the semi trucks going across the border and essentially bringing all of those cars bringing all of those parts back into the states so that generates a lot of revenue a lot of income for

businesses and El Paso Juarez this borderplex region is right there really in the thick of it and so these projections seem to imply that you know that will continue to grow and be a pretty pretty important factor in commercial activity for our region

okay one one more on this one is on residential real estate so we've been talking in the last video about the El Paso market we had mentioned the average home price there and so this kind of speaks a little bit to that but more kind of in a broad forward looking way so the third category in third column

excuse me is 2019 the last column is 2049 so let's look at median resale price so this is the average price of a home that isn't brand new so you know this home could have been built in 1970 or it could have been built in 2015 so the in 2019 the average price of a resale home was around $150,000 in 2049

it's expected to more than double and be around $360,000 so quite honestly I think that probably trends with you know general appreciation and so homes are going to cost more but people are going to earn more and that has been stated directly in the report so another interesting thing average monthly

payment on your mortgage so in 2019 now this does not count property taxes this does not count home insurance just as just principal and interest your average monthly payment in 2019 was about $627 they're saying in 2049 that your average monthly payment for a home not rent for owning a home paying a mortgage would be

over $1,500 and now I wanted to read this because I thought it was pretty interesting so it says housing price inflation drives monthly mortgage payments above the $1,500 mark by the end of the forecast 2049 while that number seems daunting relative to what is tallied for last year $627 this is a

key affordability is projected to improve substantially as a consequence of income improvements okay affordability is projected to improve substantially as a consequence of income improvements so what they're saying is while yes that looks like a pretty dramatic increase that's going to

be offset that there's going to be that that's going to be a sustainable doable situation for most people because of income improvements so like I said you know things are going to cost more in the future but hopefully we're all also making more right so if a city is is doing well is thriving is growing that's

that's the goal things cost more but people can afford more and can afford those things that cost more because they're making more money so that is pretty much it if you're really interested in this kind of stuff like I said the links I'm going to put in the description it goes on to talk about

hotel activity which I think has some implications for investors and entrepreneurs business people suggests that more people will be coming here to El Paso to visit whether it's for business or pleasure right has some implications for say short-term and long-term rentals if you're an investor

there's a section in here about air transportation an interesting section about water consumption so there's a lot of really cool information in there if if you consider numbers and data cool which some of you probably don't but some of you do and that was it we've got one more week in 2020 hopefully 2021 is

going to be a little kinder to all of us next week I'm going to kind of showcase Christmas in El Paso and you know for me it used to be that Christmas was all about kind of snow and sleds and bundling up and fires and all of that you know I was in Wisconsin for a number of years Kansas City Missouri Chicago so

now Christmas in the desert is a lot different but we've got a lot of really cool things actually happening and so next week I'm going to showcase those if you're interested in learning more about El Paso like I said please consider subscribing to the channel thank you so much for watching we will see you next

time