Source: Austin Board of REALTORS®, U.S. News
CENTRAL, Texas — Good news for homebuyers in Central Texas: median home prices had the largest drop since July 2011, according to a new report.
According to the report released by the Austin Board of REALTORS® (ABoR), median home prices dropped 6.3%.
January’s data demonstrates the Austin-Round Rock MSA market is continuing to find a post-pandemic normal.
In January, residential home sales declined 27.3% year-over-year to 1,634 closed sales and sales dollar volume declined 29.1% to $917,954,115. New listings dropped 16% year-over-year to 2,988 listings while pending listings dropped 16.7% to 2,581 transactions. Monthly housing inventory increased 2.3 months to 2.7 months of inventory, and homes spent an average of 76 days on the market, up 47 days from January 2022, but only up three days from December 2022.
When looking at the added context of month-to-month changes from December 2022 to January 2023, in addition to a modest change in days on market, new listings increased 63.4% to 2,988 month-to-month. This demonstrates that sellers see opportunity in this market. At the same time, buyers also were more active in January 2023 compared to December 2022 as pending listings increased 32.4% to 2,581.
Austin tied with Durham, North Carolina for third place in the U.S. News & World Report’s latest Housing Market Index, released Feb. 14. Raleigh, North Carolina ranked first and Denver ranked second.
The index takes into account data on employment, housing prices, builder sentiment and much more.
Austin ranked No. 4 in the supply sub-index, which included government data on housing supply, rental vacancy rates, construction costs, construction jobs, builder sentiment from the National Association of Home Builders and architectural billings from the American Institute of Architects.
Austin did not rank in the top 10 markets for demand. In fact, only Raleigh and Durham ranked higher than the national median in that sub-index.
But the overall ranking stands in stark contrast to the dire prediction that Goldman analysts delivered to clients in January: that Austin and three other U.S. markets would see prices climb and then fall as much as 25%. Local REALTORS® contend that those examining Austin from afar and comparing today’s market to that of the past two pandemic-impacted years are missing the mark.
