-10%

April 2023 median sold price

vs.

April 2022 median sold price

(MLS data)

In May of 2022 the median sold price in Austin, according to MLS data, peaked ~730K.  I mentioned in an earlier article that 2023 would be the year of the tough compare.  And that is what is happening… so far in 2023 the median sold price has been short of those 2022 numbers each month, and in May we will likely see the biggest shortfall before things start to get better.

New Listings:

This is the time of year when activity picks up and buyer begin to look and sellers put their homes on the market.  You can see in the graph below that the number of new listings coming on the market is typically highest in the May / June timeframe.  In 2023, the number of new listings through the end of April is about 2% higher than the same time in 2022, though April was down 3% vs. April 2022.

Pending Transactions:

Buyer activity has steadily increased this year, which is typical, but is lagging last year (down about 8% YTD). April was down vs. recent previous years except for 2020, which was impacted by the Covid lockdowns.

In 2022, you can see that pending transactions started to decline in May (typically when things are ramping up), driven by rapidly increasing interest rates.  January 2022 interest rates started around 3%, and by the end of May had risen to a little over 5%.  But the rates have been more stable in 2023, starting the year around 6.5% and currently a little lower than that.

Months of Inventory:

Months of inventory continue to indicate a buyer’s market in the higher price points.  In price ranges above $2M, there is roughly 9 months of inventory in the core Austin area and ~12 months of inventory in Austin overall.

In the Central Austin market, we ended April with roughly 5 months of inventory, up from 4.3 in the previous month of March, and up substantially over April 2022, which had 1.2 months of inventory.