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Austin Real Estate Stats Feb 2009

With all that is happening in our economy lately here is a recap of how it is affecting the Real Estate Market.

So what happened in the Austin real estate market in February? For a recap, the Austin market first slowed down in around August 2007 due to the national subprime issues. The market held steady at its new slower pace for around a year. Then we experienced another slow down in October 2008.

So how was Febuary 2009. Adjusting for time of year, the market improved in February 2009 compared to January. But the market is not what it was 2 years ago or even what it was before the most recent slowdown.

One way of looking at it is that the number of sales. January 2009 has the lowest monthly sales we had seen since January 1998. February 2009 had the lowest sales for a February since February 2001. So while it’s an improvement, we are still in a very slow market.

Here are sales statistics for the last few years.

Let’s look through a few of the numbers. We had 35% less sales than 2 years ago and 28% less sales than last year. Average Price’s are up 4% and Median Price’s are up 5%. Personally I just don’t buy this. Average prices tend to change alot from month to month based on what is selling. If homes under 200k are selling less frequently because of lending restrictions average prices will in turn move up. And in the current market where lenders are changing their restrictions on a regular basis and therefore affecting what price range houses are selling, I would take average prices with a grain of salt.

One positive stat is the number of active listings is roughly steady compared to last year. So while sales are down 28% compared to last year, the number of listings is only up 3 percent.

The next stat is something I get alot of questions about which is list to sold price. Last month we were at 94.6%. This means a house listed for 100k on average would sell for 94.6K. I have alot of people that see a house for 300k and think the market is down so the seller will accept 180k. The short answer is probably not.

[[So what about all these stories of homes selling for next to nothing in places like Detriot, and why don't we see that here. Basically the market is down in Austin but the general expectation is that at some point the Austin market is going to recover. People don't seem to have that expectation about Detriot. Detriot was on a downward spiral before the current national economic mess started. Once the national economy recovers there is no particular reason to think Detriot will be a thriving metropolis. If anything when the national real estate market recovers, Detriot is likely to continue the slow downward spiral it was experiencing before.]]

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