Wondering if the Austin real estate market has stabilized?April Austin Real Estate stats are out – let’s take a look…
The market In a Nut Shell:- The average sales price of single family residences is now holding steady after the 7% drop from the height of the market 22 months ago.
- SELLERS: Since prices have dropped from the height of the market in 2007 it appears that prices are finally holding steady. This is good news in that perhaps we have seen the bottom and prices will only go up from here -but it also means that if you bought your Austin home in the past few years but are selling it today, your home is most likely worth less than what you paid for it – not worth more. That means you will not be selling for a profit but for a loss. To read more about pricing your home, read Krisstina’s article, “Are You Still Living In A Bubble“.
- BUYERS: The market appears to be stabilizing. That means that prices do not appear to be dropping more which means it may be likely that we have hit the bottom. If this is true, that means that prices will only go up from here. So what that means, is that if you waiting to buy, you may pay more for a home by waiting until tomorrow than today. With interest rates being low and prices having dropped from market heights buy likely stabilizing, now would be a good bet for best time to buy. With stable prices, unless a home is grossly overpriced (which plenty still are) don’t expect to get a steal in the Austin market! For the overpriced homes – it is likely that you will have to walk-away. Sellers who still have their homes grossly overpriced just are not in touch with reality and your justifiable low ball offer most likely won’t help them get there
- Property Virgins (aka First-time Homebuyers): BUY NOW! THERE WILL LIKELY NEVER BE A BETTER TIME TO BUY! Uncle Sam is basically gifting you $8,000, Interest Rates are Low AND Prices are lower than they have been in years. Do you really think you will find a better time to buy your first home? For more Info on the First-Time Homebuyer Credit click here.
Now on to the Graphs: 
Sales Closed by MonthIn April of this year, we experienced a 16% decrease in the number of sales of single family homes compared to April 2008 (that’s 308 less homes). This is also a 46% drop in the number of homes sold compared to the high tracked in my graphs…June 2006. You can also notice that we are tracking a curve that is consistent with the past years, although we have not really experienced any dips in the curve compared to history. In fact, we are consistently tracking a 12% increase in Austin home sales on a monthly basis.
What does this mean to you?If we continue to track at this pace until the traditional peak in June, we can anticipate to peak with about 2,000 home sales in that month alone. Granted, this is far off from the hay day of 2006, but certainly will get us back on track to a healthy real estate recovery. As a seller, this means buyer activity has increased and as a result, more homes on the market are selling, leading us to speculate a market recovery. As a buyer, this means that if number of sales continue to go up, bringing listing inventory down, prices will go up. Now is the time to buy.
Active ListingsAs you notice in the graph above, we started this year with a spike in the number of homes for sale in Austin (inventory), but that spike quickly leveled off and we currently have 145 less homes on the market now than we did last year. The number of active homes for sale in April was 9,889 while the number of homes sold was just 1,601.
What does this mean to you?At our current pace, we have 6 months of available inventory in the market. In other words, if not a single more home was put up for sale, we would sell out of the homes that are currently available in 6 months … and then there would be no more homes for sale! While that brings a frown to my face, the reality is that sellers will continue to sell and more buyers will enter the market to absorb the inventory. According to the National Association of Realtors, a balanced market exists when the absorption rate (or how long it will take to sell the current inventory of homes) equals 6 months. Congratulations, Austin … we are balanced (at least in real estate!). What is your house worth???
Find out here.
Average Sales PriceWow … that graph above seems to have flipped upside down! In February of this year, the average sales price was $241,655 and in April it was $232,403 which was 3.8% less than the average sales price for April 2008.
What does this mean to you?Simply put: the sky is not falling. Stop listening to the media hype of a ‘national’ real estate market that screams of a market of homes being valued at 40%-50% of the values of just 2 years ago. This is not our reality. The reality is that Austin homes are selling for an average of 93% of what they sold for just 2 years ago. That’s a 7% drop in value over the past 2 years, not a 50% or 60% drop! Buyers: there are NO steals in Austin. In fact, the Today show recently ran an interview talking about cities on the verge of recovery. Austin was one of five.
WATCH THE VIDEO
Sold to list priceThis month, the sold to list price (the percentage of the asking price that the home sold for) ended up at 95.6% from an all-time low of 94.2%. The all-time high was in the buying frenzy of June 2006 and peaked at 97.7%. We are currently increasing at an average of .5% each month, which should place us at 96.7% in June of this year.
What does this mean to you?Sellers took some time to realize that buyers determine the market value of their homes, the buyers were not willing to pay what the buyers were asking, and sellers sold their homes for a bit less than what they were asking for their homes. As this graph (and EVERY other graph and factual statistical data herein) supports, we have likely seen the bottom of the market and we are emerging to experience a balanced market … one where it takes a
city-wide average of 6 months to sell a house. The steals are gone. Great deals can still be had … as always … but it takes knowledgeable help in the market to find, negotiate, secure, and purchase them.Who is in your corner?What are you waiting for?The data provided to create these graphs are available to you by subscription to our monthly update service. Please email us
info@goodlifeteam.com to receive your monthly update.
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