Real Estate Report
City of Austin home price hits record $667,000 as number of homes for sale soars
Once again, the city of Austin's median home price has risen to a new record high.
According to the latest monthly report from the Austin Board of Realtors, the median price in the city limits soared to $667,000 in May 2022, representing an 18.1 percent increase from May 2021 and a significant jump from April 2022, when it hit $640,000.
While the Austin-Round Rock metro area's median home price held steady in May ($550,000, the same figure as April 2022, ABoR reports), home prices in all five counties in the region continued to climb. Travis County recorded a median home price of $659,000, up more than 21 percent from a year ago.
But prices weren't the only thing on the rise. In a bit of good news, the Austin market saw active listings grow by a whopping 146 percent year-over-year in May, pushing the area's housing inventory above the one-month mark for the first time in seven months. That increased inventory, says a release, provides more opportunities for the area's many buyers.
“The strength of our evolving housing market remains a very important part of Austin’s economy,” Cord Shiflet, 2022 ABoR president, says in the release. “The increase in inventory that we’re seeing is helpful for buyers who have had a hard time finding a home these past two years.”
Perhaps even more important, "this slight increase in inventory and active listings point to the market beginning to normalize," says Adam Perdue, a research economist at the Real Estate Center at Texas A&M University. "While year over year price increases will continue to remain high, we project them to fall slightly lower than the long-term trend we’ve monitored over the past two years."
And contrary to a recent Insider analysis that pinpointed Austin as the No. 1 market on the bubble, Perdue says Austin's affordability issues do not point to a bubble bursting or a market collapsing.
“The Austin housing market has experienced a multitude of factors that have influenced its current state, one of those being the high influx of companies and individuals migrating to the area both from within Texas and out-of-state, which has contributed to a strong and diverse economy attractive to people seeking opportunity," he says. "Given this growth and continued increases in prices, the sales decline appears to be more likely a supply issue than a demand one and does not indicate a bubble bursting.”
