Less stress

Zillow's new real estate service offers Austin sellers cash for homes

This home is currently on sale for $365,000 — $10,000 less than the median price inside the Austin city limits.

While not quite on par with getting married, being fired, or coping with the death of a loved, selling a home is still a stressful experience. Luckily, a new service aims to alleviate some of the pain felt by home sellers in the Austin area.

The new service, called Zillow Offers — part of the eponymous real estate conglomerate — enables a home seller in the Austin area to request a no-obligation cash offer from Zillow to buy their home. Through this new platform, the company directly buys a house once the seller accepts the offer, prepares it for showings, and then lists it for sale.

In short, Zillow Offers is jumping into the home-flipping business.

“It’s clear people want a simpler, easier, and less stressful way to buy and sell homes. To meet the needs of today’s on-demand consumers, Zillow is rewiring real estate to create a seamless and integrated transaction experience,” Jeremy Wacksman, president of the Zillow brand, says in a release.

Agents from local real estate brokerages represent Zillow in these deals. Zillow pays a commission to local agents when it buys and sells each home.

Aside from Austin, Zillow recently rolled out Zillow Offers in San Antonio, Los Angeles, Sacramento, San Diego, and Tampa, Florida. Zillow Offers already was available in Dallas; Houston; Atlanta; Phoenix; Las Vegas; Denver; Riverside, California; and Charlotte and Raleigh, North Carolina.

Wacksman says more than 100,000 sellers have requested a Zillow Offer since the service was launched in 2018.

Zillow purchased 898 homes and sold 414 in the first three months of 2019, according to Forbes.com. Within three to five years, Zillow aims to buy 5,000 homes a month — an opportunity it says represents $20 billion in revenue, The Real Deal reports.

Forbes.com also reports that Zillow Offers “has been met with skepticism by Wall Street and housing economists, but the Seattle-based company clearly sees the model as its path forward.”

That path is obstructed, though. This month, Austin-based residential real estate giant Keller Williams is joining what The Real Deal described as the cash-offer craze by launching its answer to Zillow Offers in Dallas. Keller Williams plans to introduce the Keller Offers platform to as many as eight major U.S. markets in 2019.

The Real Deal says Keller Offers lets homeowners flip a property for cash using a computer-generated offer based on data about the property. Other competitors in the increasingly crowded home-flipping space include HomeLight, Opendoor, Offerpad, and Redfin.

home-for-sale

local real estate report

Homebuyers can afford to be picky as Austin housing inventory rises

Photo by Avinash Kumar on Unsplash

Housing economist Clare Losey said the most significant factor affecting home sales in Austin is high mortgage rates.

The latest real estate report from Unlock MLS and the Austin Board of Realtors (ABoR) has revealed housing inventory is still on a steady rise in the Austin-Round Rock-San Marcos MSA, creating more choices for potential homebuyers as they navigate a high interest rate market.

Residential home sales dipped by a mere 1.5 percent year-over-year from October 2023, amounting to 2,248 closed sales in the Austin-Round Rock-San Marcos MSA. Median prices have also dropped to $430,000, or 3.2 percent less than this time last year. More than 3,300 new home listings were added on the market — a 7.4 percent increase from 2023 — bringing the total number of active home listings to 11,599.

According to Unlock MLS and ABoR housing economist Clare Losey, Ph.D., October's mortgage rates stood at 6.4 percent and are showing no signs of a significant drop in the near future. Even heading into 2025, Losey says potential homebuyers who are biding their time in the hopes of seeing rates plummet "may be in for a long wait."

"In the meantime, sellers must recognize that bringing buyers to the table requires a more aggressive pricing approach," Losey said. "Even in a more balanced market, buyers with limited purchasing power are struggling to meet current price expectations."

As for the overall health of the Central Texas housing market, 2024 Unlock MLS and ABoR president Kent Redding labeled recent news reports that called Austin "ground zero" for a downturn as an "extreme over-exaggeration."

"Austin led the state and nation in record-breaking home price growth and sales activity during the pandemic," Redding said. "For three years, near-zero housing inventory, numerous offers above list price and a rapid-paced market raised home prices and left little negotiating power for buyers. During this record-setting growth, ABoR and Unlock MLS consistently emphasized the unsustainability of the rapid growth, and now, our market is working to balance those extremes."

Central Texas housing trends in October 2024

In Travis County, 979 homes were sold last month — a slight 2.5 percent increase from last year. Median prices remained flat year-over-year at $510,000. Active home listings continued growing to 5,702 homes, which is 9.4 percent more year-over-year.

In Williamson County, 807 homes were sold in October, with median prices steadily dropping to $420,000. There were 1,028 new home listings on the market, showing a 4.5 percent increase from October 2023, bringing the total number of active home listings to 3,369.

Residential home sales dropped by nearly eight percent in Hays County in October, totaling 315 sales. Median prices also fell 5.5 percent year-over-year to $359,000. Active listings rose 6.6 percent year-over-year to 1,740 homes with the addition of 534 new listings on the market.

Meanwhile, 114 homes were sold in Bastrop County last month, which is 4.4 percent more than this time last year. Median prices dropped by a single percentage point year-over-year to $355,000. There were 654 active listings on the market in October, and 152 new home listings, representing a 1.3 percent slip in new inventory when compared to last year.

Only 33 homes were sold in Caldwell County in October to reflect a near 14 percent decline year-over-year from October 2023. Median prices fell to $262,990, which was a 13.5 percent decrease from last year. There were 136 active homes on the market last month, and 40 new homes added on the market.

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