Luxe Austin Homes - demand

"Fed Says: Don't Get Too Excited About Rates Just Yet"

There's no question that last week was an exciting one for rates. On Wednesday, the average 30yr fixed was fairly close to the highest levels since 2002. The following afternoon, it had fallen more than half a percent to the lowest level in nearly 2 months--the biggest single day drop on record.  

While rates are still very high relative to anything but the past 8 weeks, it was a promising step in the right direction.  It raised hopes for a bigger picture shift after the fastest rate spike in 40 years.  

As the new week got underway, rates managed to hold onto their newfound gains relatively well and with minimal volatility on average.  Things may have been better were it not for a concerted effort on the part of the Fed to remind the market not…

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"Housing market in Round Rock, Pflugerville, Hutto moving toward stabilization, report shows"

Community Impact writes, "the latest data from the Austin Board of Realtors shows a continuing trend of stabilizing home prices and supply in Round Rock, Pflugerville and Hutto.

According to the ABoR's monthly report for October, the median price of a home sold across the three cities in October was $457,876. While a slight increase over September's median price of $450,000, that price is still lower than the prior two months—$475,000 in August and $476,458 in July.

Additionally, $457,876 is a 5.4% year-over-year increase from October 2021's median price of $434,495.

By comparison, the broader Central Texas market saw a median sale price of $421,149 in October, while the city of Austin saw a $555,000 median sale price.

ABoR President Cord Shiflet said…

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"Compass shares soar 90% around earnings report"

TheRealDeal writes, "Compass shares climbed to a nearly three-month high Friday after an earnings report revealed mounting losses but gains in market share and progress in its cost-cutting efforts.

The run-up began Thursday, before earnings were released at the market close. The share price gained 32 percent that day, then another 73 percent in the first hour of trading Friday before retreating a bit.

The brokerage’s stock was hovering around $3.50 at midday, up nearly 50 percent since markets opened Friday morning and 90 percent from Wednesday afternoon, when it fell to an all-time low of $1.85.

The iShares U.S. Real Estate ETF, an index that tracks the broader real estate sector, stood at $88.04 per share, up 7.2 percent from Wednesday…

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"Austin’s Luxury Home Sellers Shouldn’t Be Scared off by the Market Slowdown"

Although the dust is settling in Austin, Texas, after a two-year home-price explosion, indicators suggest reasons for sellers to be optimistic about the luxury market—even as median prices come down. 

Among cities where home prices are falling the most, Austin came in at No. 1 in a Realtor.com report. The median home list price in September was $558,275, a 10.3% decline from June, according to Realtor.com data. The percentage of sellers who reduced their list prices was up 252% in September. 

“There has been some initial shock where people had a little FOMO [fear of missing out] that they missed the market. So we saw agents restructuring prices with their sellers to find out where the market was,” said Gary Dolch, a founding agent of Compass and…

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"Housing markets with highest share of equity-rich households undergo biggest corrections"

Austin Business Journal reports, "even with a rapidly cooling housing market, homeowners across the U.S. are sitting on near-record levels of equity.

A recent analysis by Irvine, California-based Attom Data Solutions LLC found 48.5% of mortgaged residential properties nationally were considered equity-rich in the third quarter. A property is considered equity-rich when the amount of loan balances secured by it is no more than 50% of its estimated market value.

With the housing market downturn that began this summer, though, $1.3 trillion in recently added equity vanished from the market in Q3, according to Black Knight Inc. (NYSE: BKI), a mortgage software and analytics company.

By Attom's measurement, Q3 2022 continued to see gains in…

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"Home Builders Struggle To Find Buyers as Cancellations by Developers Rise"

Realtor.com writes, "it’s a tough time to be selling a home. That’s also true for home builders, who are seeing canceled orders and dwindling interest among would-be buyers.

“Mortgage applications have been running down close to 40% year over year. People are clearly in sort of a wait-and-see or pause mode,” John Lovallo, a UBS analyst who covers home builders, told MarketWatch on an episode of Barron’s Live.

Confidence among home builders dropped for the 10th month in a row in October to a 10-year low (with the exception of the start of the pandemic), according to the National Association of Home Builders. Traffic among prospective buyers, one of the components that measures confidence, fell significantly, the association said, as buyers look…

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"Home Prices Would Need To Fall This Much for Buyers To Get a Break"

Realtor.com writes, "since home prices shot into the stratosphere, many first-time buyers have prayed for them to fall so that they could afford to become homeowners. Their wishes appear to have been granted—and yet, they’re caught in a paradox: Even as prices have begun to dip, the cost of purchasing a home has risen. A lot.

The reason for the contradiction: soaring mortgage interest rates.

Most folks are still laser-focused on a property’s price tag. In fact, this kind of list price obsession is deeply ingrained in the American psyche. But, of course, purchasing a home is very different from buying products from a brick-and-mortar store or shopping online. Unless home shoppers are buying with all cash, they will be taking out a long-term loan…

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"Why is the real estate boom in Austin slowing down?"

KVUE Austin reports, "more than two years ago now, 2020 saw what many real estate agents and developers called a gold rush in Austin, with homes being sold in a matter of hours. Now, the market appears to be slowing down.

"It's brought a lot of people here and it was just a perfect storm," said Chester Wilson, one of the owners of Greater Austin Builders.

Two years ago, many set their sights on Austin.

"Gold rush is a perfect term for it. I've been doing this for 25 years. It was unlike anything we've ever seen," said Cord Shiflet, the president of the Austin Board of Realtors.

However, Shiflet said Austin's real estate boom isn't going anywhere but that it's just slowing down.

He noted that rather than…

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"Decline in U.S. Pending Home Sales Gathers Steam in September"

Realtor.com writes, "the numbers: U.S. pending-home sales fell 10.2% in September, which is the fourth straight monthly drop, according to the monthly index released Friday by the National Association of Realtors (NAR).

The decline was much larger that forecast. Analysts polled by the Wall Street Journal had forecast the pending home sales index to drop by 4%.

Outside of the pandemic, the drop in pending home sales is the largest year-over-year decline since 2001. Sales dropped by 33.1% in April 2020.

Contract signings fell by double-digits in all regions across the country.

Pending home sales reflect transactions where the contract has been signed for an existing-home sale, but the sale has not yet closed.

Economists view it as an…

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"Mortgage Bankers Expect Rates To Drop to 5.4% in 2023. Here’s What That Means for Home Prices."

Realtor.com reports, "high mortgage rates and recession fears are hurting home prices, so expect growth to be flat this year, one expert says.

“Our forecast is for home-price growth moderation to continue,” Joel Kan, vice president and deputy chief economist at the Mortgage Bankers Association, said Sunday during the organization’s annual conference in Nashville, Tenn.

Home prices have already begun moderating. According to Case-Shiller, home prices fell month-over-month from June to July for the first time in 20 years. The latest numbers, which will be for August, will be reported on Tuesday morning.

With a recession likely in the cards, on top of mortgage rates near or above 7%, “we’ve already seen a pretty dramatic pullback in housing…

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