Austin Real Estate Blog

The Austin market had another strong month in November. The number of sales was up 58% compared to last year at this time. While home sales stats for November 2008 were abnormally low, there is still little doubt that the Austin real estate market is generally stronger than what we have been experiencing for the last year. We had almost as many sales in November (1576) as we had in May (1691) which is highly unusual. For instance, In 2008 we saw twice as many sales in May as November.

In addition to having more sales compared to last year there are fewer properties on the market. We currently have 8,551 active listings which is down 7 percent from last year.

So why are we seeing more sales? There are two obvious factors. First the government tax credits are certainly increasing sales numbers. Second historically low mortgage rates are pushing sales numbers up. In addition, I would not call the national mood positive today, but it is without a doubt better than what it was this time last year when people were regularly talking about a total economic collapse. Below are the numbers for the last 3 years.

The average price is up 2 percent from last year and the median price is down 2 percent from last year. Average and median prices are notoriously unreliable since more or less sales in certain market segments (luxury properties or first time homes) can have more of an effect on prices than actual changes in the prices.

As far as prices, here are a few things we are seeing. Residential homes prices are holding steady or falling slightly. Houses that need repairs are selling for substantially less than what they sold for a few years ago because lenders are hesitant to give loans on these properties. Vacant lots and properties with teardown houses are selling for substantially less. Basically this is because we are seeing less building as builders try to get rid of excess inventory.

So moving beyond residential let’s look at some of the different market segments.

As we can see, residential saw 58% more sales than this time last year. We are also seeing more condo sales. I am still not too positive about condos as we still have a decent amount of excess inventory to move through. The condo situation in Austin is better than in Florida though. The downturn arrived in Austin in the midst of the condo boom so a lot of planned projects were cancelled. So while we have too much inventory it could have been worse if (like Florida) the condo building craze started a year or two earlier. All that said even with rising condo sales I still am not too positive about the health of the condo market.

The Austin commercial market as we have been talking about is on life support. It’s down 24 percent from last year and last year was bad. It’s down 46 percent from 2 years ago. Basically lenders are avoiding commercial loans like the black plague for the time being.

We are starting to see more activity in the Austin luxury market. The luxury market had been pretty dead for the year. For the first 6 months of the year, sales of properties over 1 million was down 28 percent compared to 2008. But in November 2009 we saw twice as many sales as we saw in November 2008.

As far as the different areas of Austin, here are sales numbers for the different mls areas of Austin.

As always if you have any questions about the market in general or a property in particular, feel free to contact us. If you want to search for properties on market, here is our Austin home search.