April home sales in the Austin area decreased for the second month in a row, according to a new report from the Austin Board of Realtors.

The April 2022 showed across a five-county area, home sales declined 6.2% year over year to 3,280 closed sales as the median price rose 19.6% to a new record of $550,000.

Active listings jumped 52.5% year over year to 2,763, causing housing inventory to increase by 0.3 months for a total of 0.8 months of inventory, marking the biggest gain in housing inventory year over year since the summer of 2017.

“We are far from a healthy number of homes for sale in our market, so any increase in housing stock, no matter how small, is a welcome sign for people looking to buy. Our area continues to really be influenced…

7 Views, 0 Comments

Read Full Post

Texas property owners recently received their property appraisals in the mail. In Travis County, the value of residential properties increased 56% compared to last year, leaving many people wondering what they should do next. 

Ashley Jackson, president-elect of the Austin Board of Realtors, spoke with KVUE's Ashley Goudeau about the appraisals and what homeowners can do. Below are Jackson's answers to some common property appraisal questions.

The deadline to protest an appraisal is May 16. Should I protest mine? Who should protest?

"That is really going to vary on a case-by-case basis. They [property owners] may want to reach out to their trusted Realtor to get some advice about where their market value is to see if they have a…

22 Views, 0 Comments

Read Full Post

Austin, Texas, is attracting VC firms, tech giants, and a slew of professionals from different American cities. This is pushing the demand for commercial and residential real estate in Austin.

In early 2021, the Austin Chambers of Commerce published a report that stated that the city lost 33,400 jobs in 2020 in the aftermath of the pandemic.

The situation was pretty much the same wherever you looked. Jobs were getting lost, businesses were getting shut down, and government lockdowns were the norm. There was widespread economic despair.

Where Austin performed much better than other metropolitan cities was in getting back those jobs and opportunities and softening the blow.

A string of pro-business policies, an enviable (affordable) housing…

25 Views, 0 Comments

Read Full Post

Named ‘8 Oaks’ after the number of people in their family, this property located about 30-minutes from downtown Austin is truly one-of-a-kind. The sellers are commercial real estate developer and tech startup investor Vincent Sica, and his wife, Tracey Sica, who live at the estate with their six children. To honor each member of their family, they planted eight oak trees along the driveway that leads to the house.

Built in a modern ranch style, the $16 million home is being sold off-market (with Eklund|Gomes at Douglas Elliman), and it’s one of the most expensive off-market homes in the area. (Texas is a non-disclosure state, and most of the homes of this caliber are sold off-market.) Sica is also considering cryptocurrency as payment, as he’s an…

22 Views, 0 Comments

Read Full Post

Another record-breaking month is in the books for the red-hot Austin housing market.

The latest monthly report from Austin Board of Realtors reveals all-time highs for home prices at both the city and metro levels, with median home prices surging past the $500,000 and $600,000 marks, respectively, for the very first time.

In March 2022, the median home price in the city of Austin skyrocketed to a record-setting $624,000. That figure is up more than 22 percent from March 2021, when the city's median home price hit a then record of $515,000. In February 2022, the city's median home price sat at $565,000, signaling a jump of $99,000 in just one month.

Meanwhile, the median price for the Austin metro hit $521,100 in March 2022, also up more than…

22 Views, 0 Comments

Read Full Post

Members cumulatively closed over $2.9 billion in residential sales (up from 1.7 billion) in 2021 with 739 properties (up from 545) over $1 million. 

AUSTIN, TEXAS (APRIL 11, 2022) -- Thirty Austin-area real estate agents have been selected for membership in Luxury League for 2022. 

Each year, Luxury League invites Austin-area real estate agents who specialize in luxury transactions (over $1 million)  to apply for membership. The applications are then evaluated by an advisory board, who selects members based on their luxury residential sales volume from the previous year. Sixty-nine agents applied for membership in January of 2022; collectively the entire field of 69 applicants reported over $4.5 BILLION in residential sales in 2021.

The surge…

24 Views, 0 Comments

Read Full Post

An analysis from realtor.com released last week reported Travis County tops Texas as the county with the highest median home price. The report, based on February 2022 real estate figures, reported a median home value listing at $637,000 — up more than $200,000 compared to February 2018 figures.

The five-year real estate analysis weighed out the median listings for Texas’ 10 most populated counties: Harris, Dallas, Tarrant, Bexar, Travis, Collin, Denton, Hidalgo, El Paso and Fort Bend. Despite not leading as the most populated county, Travis County’s increasingly expensive real estate landscape is a continuous trend as conversations surface on affordability concerns.

While Travis County topped the list for median home listings, Collin County…

28 Views, 0 Comments

Read Full Post

While the Austin housing market continues to shatter price records, a new study shows it’s the best U.S. market for growth and stability.

The study, published by personal finance website SmartAsset, places Austin at No. 1 among 400 metro areas for housing growth and stability. That’s up from the No. 2 spot last year.

The study notes that Austin-area home prices soared 368 percent from 1997 through the end of 2021. That was the biggest spike among all of the metro areas examined in the study. Meanwhile, it estimates there’s a zero percent chance that an Austin-area home would suffer a 5 percent drop in value within 10 years of being purchased. 

In February, the median price of a home in the Austin metro area came within $5 of $500,000,…

31 Views, 0 Comments

Read Full Post

When Lakeway resident Katie Bigus and her husband started looking for a home near his job on Bee Caves Road, she said they were financially prepared and could be aggressive in their bidding process.

Still, Bigus said, they lost out on their first choice after bidding about $98,000 over asking price with no contingencies and a leaseback to the sellers in the contract.

This has become the status quo, said April Womack, a Realtor with Moreland Properties, who works out of its Lake Travis location.

“It’s a really strange market,” Womack said. “I compare it to gridlock on the highway. Everyone is trying to get somewhere, but traffic just won’t move.”She said while sellers love the equity rising home values have added to their homes, they would pay more to…

33 Views, 0 Comments

Read Full Post

Why Austin?

CrowdStreet evaluated multiple data points from leading industry sources to compile its list of the 20 best markets for real estate investors. These markets are in the best position to benefit from the continued strength in real estate. They should deliver above-average rent growth, strong absorption rates, recovering job growth, and strong median household income growth. These factors should drive continued real estate price appreciation in 2022 across these markets.

Austin led the way because it continues to benefit from strong population and job growth. That's because companies -- especially in the technology sector -- continue to relocate and expand in the city. For example, e-commerce behemoth Amazon recently announced plans to…

44 Views, 0 Comments

Read Full Post