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Texas homes staying on the market for record-low time, new report says
Homes in Texas are being snapped up almost as quickly as Amazon Prime Day deals.
The Texas Real Estate Research Center at Texas A&M University reports that existing homes in the state stayed on the market for only a month in May. That’s a record low since the research center began tracking such data in 1997.
“Mortgage rates are still hovering around 3 percent, and ongoing demographic trends continue to support housing demand,” Luis Torres, research economist at the Texas Real Estate Research Center, says in a June 23 news release.
Sales of existing homes (those that aren’t newly built) rose 2.5 percent by 29,000 transactions from April to May, the center says. However, the sales level remained more than 2,000 below the peak reached at the start of 2021.
At the same time, Texas saw a 3.1 percent decline in new listings in May, pulling the state’s inventory of existing homes down to 1.1 months. This supply figure refers to the number of months it would take for the existing inventory of homes on the market to sell based on the current pace of sales.
“The extremely low level of supply available is holding back sales,” Torres says. “The limited inventory for homes priced less than $300,000 is particularly distressing and is stressing home affordability.”
The median sale price of an existing home in Texas climbed 27.8 percent to $289,900 in May compared with the same time in 2020.
“Although median household incomes continue to rise, median home prices have risen aggressively. … It is a priority for Texas Realtors to continue to speak with our state’s leaders and work to ensure that homeownership remains attainable, particularly for first-time homebuyers,” Plano real estate agent Marvin Jolly, chairman of the Texas Realtors group, said in an April news release.