Austin Real Estate Blog

The December market statistics are out for the Austin Real Estate market. We continue to see a strong market. Compared to last year, the median price for a single family home is up 4 percent from $170,000 to $177,500. The number of house sales went up 3 percent from 1938 to 1996. The number of listings stayed roughly the same, going down just a little from 6873 to 6852.

One thing that is interesting is in December 2006 the number of house listings dipped and was slightly lower than the number of listings on the market in December 2005. In September 2006, we had 5% more properties on the market than September 2005. It was also true in October and November that we had more properties on the market in 2006 than in the same month in 2005. Because Austin is growing, it made sense there was more on the market in 2006 than in 2005. So we are experiencing a lack of supply of houses on the market. This is usually a sign for builders to start building houses on the outskirts of Austin. This might not be a wise move. If we break down the market further we see that the shortage of homes is mostly in the central Austin area.

I broke out the central Austin mls areas below. For these areas, we are seeing only 870 houses on the market compared to 983 at the same time last year. So, we are seeing a decrease of about 11 percent in central Austin.

Historical statistics for the Austin real estate market for last three years are located here Austin Real Estate Market Statistics.