Highland Park West / Balcones Area (HPWBA) Real Estate Market Update – July 2022

Now passed the halfway point in the year, I wanted to provide an update on how 2022 is going and compare to previous years.  A few highlights from the table below:

• Hard to believe that in 2019, the last “normal year” by the mid-point of the year nearly 50 homes had been listed. 2022 is down over -60% from that at just 18 through the end of June
• Transactions are down substantially, with just over 1 per month, and by the way… nothing pending right now
• Prices are up significantly, with sold prices still slightly exceeding list prices, which suggests a very competitive market
• Median sold $ / sq ft is approaching $620 / sq ft, over 40% higher than the same point in 2021 (see graph further down for a visual of the trend)

Note the rapid appreciation over the last couple of years in the neighborhood, as median sold price / sq ft has risen to roughly $620.  Or consider this… median sold $ / sq ft has risen over 63% since 2019.

I decided to leave a lot of years in this graph to show how stable the rate of appreciation has been for years and years, and then in Q3 2020 we saw a big jump.  2021 started out stronger than prior years but then in Q4 things really took off, and you can see that 2022 is in a league of its own.  Not reflected in the data but there have been two sales so far in July 2022 and those are both for 2M+.

Lastly, I just wanted to share a couple of graphics… one for the neighborhood and another for the city overall.

Here is a graph showing the year-on-year price appreciation for homes in the HPWBA neighborhood based on median sold $ / sq ft:

I also look at transactions for all of Austin, by week, in order to get a feel for the broader market and level of activity.  You can see that after peaking at the end of April, transactions have been on a steady decline since then, with weekly totals in July now well below 200.

If you are curious about the market value for your home, or would like to just visit about what is happening now and what we might expect to see in the coming months, I’m always happy to chat and love to see homes (our neighborhood has so many spectacular ones, both new and old).  Coffee and a snack at Russell’s are on me!