In January, Austin’s housing market showed an encouraging uptick in activity from December, despite seeing its largest year-over-year decrease in home price since July 2011.
According to the latest market report from Austin Board of Realtors, January’s median sales price of $450,000 was a 6.3% decrease from the previous year – the most significant price drop since July of 2011. However, new listings from December to January jumped a substantial 63.4% to just shy of 3,000 homes. ABoR says this increase indicates sellers finding greater opportunity in the current market, and more active buyers as the new year kicks off.
Ashley Jackson, 2023 ABoR president, encouraged consumers to be mindful of the context in which these statistics are being reported to better understand their relevance.
“It is important to remember that when we compare year-over-year, we are currently comparing to an abnormal time in our market,” said Jackson.
“As we reset our expectations to reflect the information our REALTOR® experts are seeing in real-time, we need to look at month-to-month trends to have a true sense of what is going on in the region. REALTORS® are seeing an uptick in activity from December 2022 to January 2023, and that is reflected in the new and pending listing trends month-to-month.”
In December ‘22, ABoR reported 1,828 new listings, which jumped significantly to 2,988 by January. Pending sales sat at 1,949, and rose to 2,581. Despite these increases, year-over-year data showed a 16% drop in new listings and a 27.3% decrease in home sales. Homes stayed on the market for 76 days in January – just three more than in December, but 47 more than in January of the previous year.
Jackson predicted that, more than a stabilizing market, consumers’ biggest obstacles in the new year will be rising interest rates and a continued lack of available inventory.
“Housing affordability woes combined with higher interest rates play an outsized role in market activity. There is no national real estate market. Consumers need to follow local REALTORS® and local news while taking sensational headlines and reports with many grains of salt.”