Austin Real Estate Blog

May Statistics are out for the Austin real estate market. The numbers at first glace are pretty impressive. We had 2,074 sales in May this is up 24% from this time last year. The tax credit ended in April so at first glance it seems that the ending of the tax credit will not have too large an effect on the real estate market. The trick is that although the tax credit ended in April. Most contracts written up in the month of April actually close in May. So the May statistics are still heavily influenced by the Tax Credit. So we had a strong sales month in May but a lot of that strength was influenced by the tax credit. Here are the numbers for the last 3 years

What worries me is the number 11,230. That is the number of homes currently on the market. This is up 13% from a year ago. It’s the highest number of homes on the market in the last 3 years.

The reason that is concerning is one would expect that due to the high volume of sales we saw the last few months that inventory levels would have gone down.

Instead inventory levels have increased as sellers have started to put their homes on the market.

There are two ways to look at this.
If we see the expected drop off in sales with the tax credit expiring and the usual increase in inventory in the summer we could see a glut of homes on the market. On the other hand possibly people that would have usually listed in the summer listed earlier in an attempt to target the tax credit buyers. We will know one way or another in the next few months.

Median and Average prices were both down (2 and 3 percent). We are seeing steeper drops with fix up properties for 2 reasons. Banks are more likely to turn down loans for fixer upper houses. Additionally, investors that buy and flip homes have become an endangered species. That said, it’s probably not a bad time to buy a fixer upper since the price differential between rough houses and fixed up houses is higher than it’s been in a long time.

So let’s look at the different segments of the Austin real estate market.

Single Family is up 24% and condos are up 28%. The multifamily had a down month and was down 10% from last year. The commercial market remains pretty dead. We have started to see some more activity in the market for vacant lots.

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 the market, here is our search of the Austin MLS.