Austin Real Estate Stats You Won’t Get Anywhere Else

(To skip straight to the market report, scroll to the bottom of this post.)

Can you believe that it’s mid-March already?!

March, for real estate, marks the beginning of the Spring selling season. More and more people will be listing their homes for sale–trying to time the market to sell in the least amount of time for the most amount of money.

The question I have is… what do we do with all the homes that are already on the market now?

Surely someone will buy them, right??

If they just stay on the market a little longer, the Spring buyers will scoop them up, right??

===> My answer to this question is a little more complicated than just YES or NO.

1. I want to know how many homes are currently for sale today.

8,238 Homes For Sale

2. I want to make this number relevant. Simply, is this a lot of homes for sale?

If we compare the last  six years of homes for sale, it doesn’t seem that bad. The number of homes for sale is down from 2008-2010 and up from 2006-2007.

3. How does this compare to the number of homes actually selling?

Sale are about even with the last two years. Sales are significantly lower than 2006-2008.

4. This leaves us with a big gap between homes for sale and homes sold. Where does all this excess inventory of homes come from and what do we do with it?

I hope it wasn’t too obvious that I was building up to this question.

If you apply the basic principles of supply and demand, the market should naturally correct itself. Since there is a low demand, wouldn’t you think supply would diminish along side it? The outlining factors are infinitely more complicated…

There is:

• Relocation–people need to move to where the jobs are. They have to sell.
• Can’t afford it–The mortgage is too much to handle due to job loss, an ARM resetting, etc, etc, etc.
• Downsize or Upgrade– the home is either too big or too small to accommodate the sellers needs.
• The list can keep going on and on.

Still, I wanted to dig deeper to answer this question. I did an extensive study on the homes that are currently for sale.

I came up with a few things:

• The average days on market for active listings is… 113 days! (The average days on market for SOLD homes is 87 days)
• Of the active homes for sale, 27.9% of them were purchased in the last 7 years.

Everyone has heard the saying, “buy low, sell high”.
Unfortunately, for nearly 30% of homes on the market, the opposite is true.

The worst part about this statistic is that this about a home, not just an investment. This is the American dream. It is the place that children will be raised, families will be made and lives will be lived. It is nothing like the stock market where money is gained and lost on a regular basis. This is the front lines, where it doesn’t get any more real.

If you find yourself on the market and you cannot figure out why you can’t sell your home, see if any if the above is true for you. Also, ask your Realtor if they know any of this.

To learn more about the Austin Real Estate Market, see our market report below.

Thanks for reading,
Laura