Luxe Austin Homes - economy

"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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"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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"Q&A: Real estate developer discusses opportunities for urban infill investments"

Austin Business Journal reports, "many of the country’s fastest-growing cities have certain commonalities that make them magnets for population migration. Job opportunities, a rich culture and access to outdoor activities are a few of the reasons people are drawn to places like Austin, Dallas, Seattle and Denver.

What these places also have in common is a lack of housing stock to accommodate the thousands of people who move there each year. While housing developers often eye large tracts of land outside of cities where they can build hundreds of homes, suburban sprawl is taking a toll on the U.S. economy. And the cost of public infrastructure maintenance is weighing on depopulating towns across the country.

StoryBuilt is taking a different…

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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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"‘Incentives Come in Many Forms’: Here Are Ways To Lower Your Mortgage Rate, According to This Mortgage Company CEO"

Realor.com writes, "mortgage rates are double where they were a year ago, making home buying a much more costly endeavor. Home sellers are trying to help them out.

Buyers are not feeling the market, depressing mortgage demand. Rates are hovering at around 7%, which adds hundreds of dollars in additional monthly payments for prospective buyers’ budgets.

Even though the number of for-sale homes is growing, they’re still expensive, creating affordability issues for buyers.

Some builders and sellers are getting more creative, and offering ways for potential home buyers to lower their mortgage rate and monthly payments.

“There are programs out there today, like something called a 2-1 buydown or a 3-2-1 buydown,” Michael Isaacs, the CEO of GO…

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"International homebuyers still flock to Austin but are spending less than pre-pandemic"

Austin Business Journal reports, "Austin's international homebuyer market is still down in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic.

That’s according to the Austin Board of Realtors' 2022 Central Texas International Homebuyers Report. From April 2021 to March 2022, international buyers purchased $613 million worth of residential properties in Travis, Williamson, Hays, Bastrop and Caldwell counties — representing 3% of total home sales.

That number was relatively flat compared with the $634 million figure from the 2021 report, but is a steep drop from the $800 million reported in 2020, the first year the report was compiled.

Though international buyers contributed less to the housing market, Realtors say Covid-19 is less of a concern to clients now.

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"Austin is a millennial magnet, with tens of thousands moving here last year"

Austin Business Journal writes, "Austin's millennial population grew more than any other city in the nation last year, according to data collected by personal finance website SmartAsset.

The findings, released Oct. 27, suggest that the city’s strong economy and standard of living continue to attract huge numbers of people at the height of working age.

However, other studies indicate the dramatic rise in the cost of living in the city and its shortage of housing continue to impede first-time homebuyers, many of whom are millennials.

Nearly 24,000 millennials — those born from the early 1980s to the mid-1990s — moved to Austin in 2021, according to SmartAsset.

That compared with the more than 13,400 that left, according to SmartAsset's…

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"Austin's economy among fastest-growing in the U.S., new report finds"

Austin American-Statesman writes, "Austin's boom is far from over, as a new report says the metro area has the second-fastest-growing economy in the country.

Austin's estimated regional gross domestic product — the total value of goods and services produced in one year — increased by 4.3% this year, second only to San Francisco's growth at 4.8%, according to the Kenan Institute of Private Enterprise at the University of North Carolina.

The report is the institute's first as a part of its American Growth Project, which aims to provide "up-to-the-minute" economic data for the microeconomies of towns, cities and counties across the country.

Hoping to help government officials and community leaders understand real-time industry trends, forecasts…

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"How High Can Mortgage Rates Possibly Go?"

Realtor.com writes, "higher mortgage interest rates have taken a battering ram to the housing market.

Since the start of the year, mortgage rates have more than doubled. They’ve blown past all expectations, nationally exceeding 7% by some estimates. The possibility that rates could continue to rise has struck fear into the hearts—and bank accounts—of many stressed-out homebuyers.

The simple, and dispiriting, math: Every time they tick up, fewer buyers can qualify for loans—and those that do often can afford to buy only much cheaper homes.

So how high could rates go? The answer depends largely on how the economy fares. If inflation persists, the U.S. Federal Reserve will keep raising its own interest rates and mortgage rates will likely follow…

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iBuyers, short-term rental owners could see divergence as investor activity plateaus in Q2

Investor activity began to plateau in the second quarter but even with higher interest rates and a slowing housing market, it's likely some groups will continue to find opportunity.

Real estate investors bought 87,500 U.S. homes in the second quarter, up 11% on a quarterly basis and 5.9% higher year over year, according to Seattle-based Redfin Corp. (Nasdaq: RDFN). Investors bought an all-time high of 93,700 homes in Q3 2021 but, as Redfin notes, investors continue to buy more homes than they did pre-pandemic.

Investors purchased a record $60.1 billion worth of real estate in Q2, and their market share was 19.4% of all homes purchased last quarter (down from 20.5% in Q1).

Defined by Redfin and most industry groups as an institution or…

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