Housing Woes

Want to buy a house in Austin? Then you better move fast.

Austin home house 2105 E 9th St 78702 January 2016 front exterior

You'll have to move fast if you're looking to buy a house in Austin.

Photo courtesy of GoodLife Team

Homes are flying off the market all across the nation, and that means Austin homebuyers have to hustle even more now if they want to score a house.

The latest Zillow market report shows that U.S. homes are selling faster than at any time since 2010. In Austin, that means homes are on the market for a median of 57 days, one of the lowest figures in the country and a day less than last year.

In most fast-moving markets, such as San Francisco and Denver, the inventory of available homes has actually gone up since June 2015. That's barely the case in Austin, where our inventory is a meager 1 percent higher than it was last June. The median home price in Austin is $252,900; the national average is a much lower $187,000.

"Homes are selling faster than ever as the home shopping season hits its peak," says Zillow chief economist Dr. Svenja Gudell in a release. "If you’re looking for a home, be prepared to move quickly. Adding to this difficult buying environment is low inventory — there simply aren’t many homes to choose from."

How's it looking around the rest of Texas? The heat's slightly off in Houston, where homes are spending a median of 70 days on the market before selling for a median price of $172,900. Inventory is up 4.4 percent.

In Dallas-Fort Worth, homes spend 56 days on the market, but inventory has spiraled with a 20.5 percent decrease. Homes there are moving almost a week faster than last year.

The best news for buyers is in San Antonio, where inventory is up a healthy 20.4 percent and homes are on the market for 69 days. They're selling a little faster than last year, but at least there seem to be more homes from which to choose.

reports zillow

Rental Rumblings

Cramped? Austin renters feel the squeeze in more ways than one.

Algarita Apartments/Facebook

Austin renters have less space than they did in 2009.

Feeling cramped? There's a reason. In a recent study, real estate website Trulia found that renters — especially those with children — have less space than they did several years ago.

Trulia looked at U.S. Census Bureau's 2014 American Community Survey data to determine the number of needed bedrooms based on children and married couples in the family. Married couples together only need one bedroom, while non-married adults as well as children were assumed to each need one bedroom. Households with fewer bedrooms than non-married adults or children are considered to suffer the “space crunch.”

In the nation’s biggest metro areas, 14.7 percent of households had fewer bedrooms than family members, an increase of half-a-percentage point since 2009. The study showed that renters with kids are especially cramped, and the larger and pricier the metro, the more likely renters are tight on space. Trulia found that just 8.1 percent of nationwide homeowners are tight on space, versus 26.4 percent of households who rent.

Contrary to the national trend, a few major Texas metros, including Houston and Dallas, posted a bigger drop among space-crunched renters compared to homeowners. Austin, Fort Worth, and San Antonio, on the other hand, are consistent with the national trend, where more renting households are sharing bedrooms than they did in 2009.

In the Austin-Round Rock metro area, 13.2 percent of residents face the space crunch. The bunk-bed wave hit just 7.3 percent of Austin homeowners in 2014, down .6 percentage points over a five-year period. In comparison, 22.8 percent of renting households have fewer bedrooms than they need, up 2.4 percentage points since 2009 — the highest increase in Texas by far.

While space is seemingly getting worse for renters in Austin, as well as Fort Worth and San Antonio, the share of cramped renters in Houston and Dallas has dropped more significantly between 2009 and 2014 than the share of cramped homeowners. Still, 28.8 percent of Houston-area renters are bunking up. In Dallas, the figure is over 27 percent.

reports