The Austin real estate market is following the typical seasonal pattern and continues to slow as we move toward the holiday season. Transactions are running behind the 2022 pace, down more than 13%, with higher priced homes (750K+) down nearly 25% year-to-date. And as you can see, 2022, particularly the 2nd half of the year, was well off the Covid years and even 2019.
The most real-time indication of how things are going is pending transactions, which gives a sense of the number of active buyers in the market. Since August, this has looked fairly consistent with 2022:
As far as inventory, the number of new listings coming on the market is lagging prior years and has been below the last few years every month from July to October. This is driven primarily by the lower price points below 750K.
Despite fewer homes coming on the market, the slower sales activity has led to inventory beginning to pile up. Months of inventory, particularly at higher price points, is increasing significantly.
Price points over 2M are, overall, showing ~1.5 years of inventory right now!
Higher inventory should be having some effect on pricing and certainly is, but I refreshed my year-to-date numbers for median sold price and it was still at 610K (for Austin overall). That is where it was last month when I checked it, so my analysis of the Goldman Sachs article from the beginning of the year has no change this month.
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