Austin Real Estate Blog

The February Statistics are out for the Austin Real Estate Market. First let's look at the statistics for the entire market. Below are the stats by month for the last two years.

We had to alter the statistics because this month February had 29 days and last year it only had 28.
Compared to last year at this time, the number of homes on the market is up 24% compared to last year. The number of home sales is down by 13% which is similar to last month but better than the preceding 4 months. The Average Price compared to last year is basically flat (it is up 0.1%). What does all this mean? Basically the market is weaker than last year. But it doesn't seem to be getter worse like California and Florida. Instead it's holding steady at its new slower pace.

Next let's break out some different areas of the Austin real estate market. (Here is map of Austin with the different MLS areas)

The months of inventory describes how many months it would take to sell all the inventory on the market. Generally the lower the number the stronger the market ,and high numbers designate weak market. 6 months is generally regarded as the dividing line between a buyers and sellers market. As has been the case for the last few months, the East Austin Real Estate market still has a large amount of inventory. Basically when the market slowed down, the California investors fled the market and dumped a lot of inventory on the market.

I also broke out Lakeway/Lago Vista this month. As can be seen, this area is doing very poorly. There are currently 14.5 months of inventory. Areas like Lakeway/Lago Vista where builders built too much inventory are having a hard time.

Next up is Central Austin and the Suburbs. Central Austin is doing better than the suburbs. Why? The amount of houses in central Austin is fixed while the amount of houses in the suburbs keeps growing. Due to the laws of supply and demand, when the supply is fixed prices tend to appreciate during strong markets and hold their value better during weak real estate markets. Also in Austin, there is a lot of attraction to living central because there are a lot of amentities in downtown Austin.

Below is a further breakdown of the different central Austin MLS areas.

Next, I wanted to show what the multifamily market (duplexes, triplexes, and fourplexes etc) is doing in Austin.

Basically the multifamily market in Austin is on life support. It is having the same problem as East Austin real estate. When the California real estate market started tanking, investors from California started dumping their properties here on the market. But I am more confident about the multifamily market. Unlike East Austin, multifamily properties did not experience the huge appreciation in 2006 and 2007.

In contrast, over the last two years I had a hard time finding investment properties that had positive cashflow (rents are greater than the mortgage and other property expenses each month). But now with the California investors leaving, prices have come down. In addition, since rents went up in Austin along with mortgage interest rates coming down more investment properties with positive cashflow are showing up.

If anyone has any questions about any particular areas or a particular house feel free to contact us. Also if you want to search for properties currently on the market here is our Austin Home Search.