Tim Glaze
Southlake Mayor Pro Tem Randy Williamson presents at the Chamber of Commerce, July 24.
Mayor Shawn McCaskill and Mayor Pro Tem Randy Williamson presented a bevy of numbers to the Southlake Chamber of Commerce on July 24, including an update on retail occupancy, the local housing market and the current sales tax revenue.
It was mostly good news for the business leaders of Southlake, as McCaskill reported a 2024 sales tax revenue of $42 million. Seventy-five percent of that revenue comes from people who do not live in Southlake, McCaskill said.
The city is also systematically lowering its debt, and earned a AAA bond rating in doing so.
"We're a city that doesn't have a lot of debt," McCaskill said. "We believe in paying off debt, not accruing it. We've actually paid down 60 percent of our debt in the past ten years."
In real estate news, while the sale of residential homes are currently down in Southlake, McCaskill did report that the city's total real estate net worth is approximately $12 billion. That number is up from $7.7 billion in 2019. The average home sale price hit $1.6 million in 2024.
Currently, the city has a 98 percent retail occupancy rate and an 84 percent office occupancy rate. Southlake has a total of 5.4 million square feet of office space, McCaskill said.
Finally, for the 27th consecutive year, Southlake was named a Tree City USA, a point that McCaskill was especially proud of.
"We have a ton of trees, and we don't pack in a whole bunch of stuff like some of our other neighboring cities do," he said.