The CIty of South Padre Island recently released an Economic Index prepared for the SPI EDC by AARON Economic Consulting.
Here is a summary of the report: External economic drivers indicate that the economies of Texas, the U.S. and Mexico will continue to grow in the short and medium term. The Conference Board Leading Economics indices for the U.S. and Mexico and the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas Leading Economic index show that the U.S. will grow at 2.3% in 2014 and 3% in 2015. The medium-term (2014-2019) forecast for the U.S. is 2.4%.
South Padre Island’s most important drivers – hospitality & tourism and real estate continue to improve. South Padre Island’s occupancy tax revenue grew at 5.3% in 2013 relative to 2012. Current data show that the real estate sector in Texas and South Padre Island continues to improve. Average home sale prices for 2014 have been trending upward, sales increased from January to March and declined in April and May. However, home sales and dollar volume sales have increased. The real estate data also show continuous decline in month inventory since 2011.
In their previous report, AARON Economic Consultants, used tourism and hospitality data from Corpus Christi, Galveston, and Texas as benchmarks to evaluate South Padre Island’s economic performance. Their analysis shows that the Island outperforms the other Texas destinations during the summer peak months and during March and April because of the spring break vacation and underperforms during off-peak months. The four performance indicators used to measure the Island’s performance are expected to continue to show short and medium term overall annual growth with the marked disparities between peak and off-peak months to remain unchanged in the short term. We also expect the variability in economic activity to improve as South Padre Island’s leadership continues to develop strategies to market to and attract a different demographic during off-peak months. The expected change in the four indicators will vary between 4 and 6 percent for the occupancy tax revenue, between 3 and 5 percent for Sales Tax revenue, and between 3 and 5 percent for bank deposits. Building permits are expected to increase in 2015.
