Austin Real Estate Blog

September stats for the Austin real estate market are out. The number of sales from last year is up 3 percent. The number of listings from last year is up 5 percent. The median price is up 3 percent and the number of pending listings is up 15 percent. If we compare this to last month instead of this time last year we are having less sales which is typical as we move into winter. We have about 3.5 months of supply sitting on the market. 6 months is average so we are still looking at a sellers market.

The national market of course is doing somewhat poorly. One interesting thing to look at is the average appreciation different states have been experiencing over the last few years.

Basically while the real estate market in California and Florida were seeing 20+ percent appreciation, Texas remained relatively stable.

One interesting thing is that two states, Mississippi and Louisiana hit by hurricane Katrina are experiencing strong price growth. Basically if you wipe away a large number of houses, prices will tend to rise. In New Orleans Katrina eliminated about 200,000 homes or about a third of the market. Although their are no exact numbers some estimates show rents have risen by about 100 percent.