"Build It and They Will Come: 10 Surprising Cities Where New-Home Construction Is Booming"

Realtor.com writes, "where are America’s new homes?

That question keeps boiling up to the surface, as buyers grapple with the current state of the housing market. High prices and soaring mortgage rates are driving affordability into the dirt. And lurking at the center of all buyer challenges is one towering and inescapable bugaboo: the lack of available homes. It’s simple math. Fewer homes = increased competition, higher prices, and epic levels of frustration.

Last year, new-home construction permits for single-family dwellings declined by about 14% over the previous year—and it’s hardly a new trend. Since the 1990s, U.S. housing starts per 1,000 households have been about half of what they were for the preceding 30 years. The building slowdown…

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"Housing market cools in Lake Travis-Westlake"

Community Impact shares, "the housing market in the Lake Travis-Westlake area has cooled slightly, according to data from the Austin Board of Realtors' February report.

The median home price fell to $780,000 in February from $850,000 in January, a 5.9% decrease from February 2022.

Active listings in the area have increased from 565 in January to 643 in February, while listings spend more days on the market. On average, active listings were spending 87 days on the market in February compared to 74 days in January.

“Austin’s housing market is trending in the right direction,” ABoR President Ashley Jackson said. “Buyers have more options and negotiating power with each passing month, and sellers have more time to make their next move.”

Prior…

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"Austin home buyers have more power when it comes to inventory, report says"

Culturemap Austin writes, "confidence in the real estate market has grown since February, with buyers gaining more leverage through inventory increases across the Austin-Round Rock metro area, according to the latest monthly report from the Austin Board of Realtors (ABoR).

The report shows that housing inventory in February spent an average of 84 days on the market, a massive 55-day jump from February of 2022. The current median home price for the metro area is $436,419, a 12 percent drop from the previous year.

“Austin’s housing market is trending in the right direction. Buyers have more options and negotiating power with each passing month, and sellers have more time to make their next move,” said 2023 ABoR president Ashley Jackson in a press…

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"This April week is the best time to list your Austin-area home, data says"

KXAN Austin writes, "wondering when the best time is to list your Austin home? New realtor.com data states it’s coming up soon.

The study shows the week of April 16-22 is the best time to list a home in the Austin-Round Rock metro area. This week is forecast to have above-average prices, above-average buyer demand, a fast market pace and lower competition from other sellers.

This week is also the best week for most other metros in the country, the report said, including the Houston metro. San Antonio’s best week is the following week, April 23. The report said the week of March 26 is the best time to list Dallas-Fort Worth homes — bucking the national trend.

Best times to list your Texas home

“The week of April 16-22 is expected…

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Austin rent prices increased nearly 10 percent from 2022, report finds

CultureMap Austin writes, "apartment rent keeps going up in Texas, and in Austin the increase is nearly 10 percent more than last year, making it increasingly difficult to afford living in the city. That’s according to a new national rent report from online rental marketplace Zumper.

Despite rent increases showing a small slowdown month-over-month, overall prices are still on the high side from the previous year. For example, the average rent for a two-bedroom apartment in Austin is $2,070 now, in March of 2023, which is a one percent increase from the previous month, but a nearly 10 percent increase from 2022 at 8.4 percent. The average rent for a one-bedroom is $1,670, which is a mere .60 percent increase month-over-month, but a whopping 7.7…

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"‘They’re in a hurry’: Elon Musk is building his own town in Texas. Here is everything we know about it"

Elon Musk is planning on building a “utopia” in Texas, a whole new town on thousands of acres of farmland recently bought outside the state capital of Austin.

Deeds and land records show the extent of the project and the billionaire and Twitter owner has attended meetings with land owners and real estate agents in which he and his staff have outlined his ideas for the project that The Wall Street Journal calls “a sort of Texas utopia along the Colorado River” where staff could both live and work.

Top executives at the Boring Company, the Tesla CEO’s tunnelling firm, have looked into placing the town in Bastrop County 35 miles from Austin, allowing Mr Musk to regulate some issues in a municipality of his own and speed up the projects.

People…

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"If you're considering a move to Austin, keep these real estate metrics in mind"

KVUE Austin reports, "as South by Southwest (SXSW) continues in Downtown Austin, we're starting to see more people searching for Zillow listings in the capital of the Lone Star State.

Every morning, the KVUE News team takes a look at the trending Google searches in Austin. Over the past few days – since the start of SXSW on March 10 – searches for "zillow austin" have begun appearing more and more often. On Tuesday, Day 5 of the festival, "zillow austin" was the No. 2 search at around 9 a.m.

With this trend, we thought we would highlight the cost of real estate in the Austin area compared to the median salary.

A new study from Zillow found that Texas had one of "the most valuable housing markets" in the country in 2022. The…

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"Three Historic Austin Houses Are for Sale in $20 Million Package Deal"

Bloomberg writes, "even before the lawyer Mark Mueller bought his first historic home in Austin, Texas, he “always tried to live in one, or rent one,” he says. He recalls that in the mid-1990s, as he wandered around downtown one day, he passed a white Victorian with an elegant veranda and a massive oak tree out front. Fortuitously, the house sported a “for sale” sign. “I just went, ‘Damn, I want that,’” Mueller says, and shortly thereafter closed on it and turned it into an office for his law practice.

Over the next few years, Mueller acquired the two adjacent houses (three, if you count the carriage house on one of the properties) in an area known as the Bremond Block Historic District, a group of eleven homes which is on the National Register of…

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"eXp Realty, Compass earn No. 1 spots in RealTrends 500 brokerage rankings"

RealTrends reports, "it’s official, there’s a new sheriff in town and his name is Glenn Sanford, founder of eXp Holdings and CEO of eXp Realty. The firm moved from No. 3 to No. 1 by transaction sides in the soon-to-be-announced 2023 RealTrends 500 rankings, based on 2022 data.

Robert Reffkin’s Compass held on to the top spot in sales volume, ranking No. 1 for the second year in a row. Reffkin will be a featured guest on the RealTrending podcast on March 20, where he discusses the brokerage’s growth plan, lessons learned scaling rapidly and his move to build on company culture through in-person relationship building.

A big initiative for Compass this year is to reinforce the importance of culture and encourage agents to go into the office, which…

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"Austin Housing Market Forecast"

U.S. News reports, "given the enormous popularity of the greater Austin, Texas, area for online searches, newcomers and employment growth, it may act as a reasonable bellwether for the state of the U.S. housing market. This will certainly be tested in the spring and summer selling season, when the National Association of Realtors reports that about 40% of sales of existing homes throughout the U.S are historically made between the months of May and August. Besides offering warmer weather, buying a home during these months allows buyers with school-aged children to shop, bid, close and move into a new residence before the start of a new school year.

Similar to the overall U.S. housing market in mid-2020, the Austin housing market went into…

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