May 2021 Austin Market Update

[David Ivy]

The familiar story for Austin area residential real estate continues: sky-high buyer demand, cripplingly low housing inventory, and rising prices. Here are the record-breaking May 2021 numbers from the Austin Board of Realtors:

Note that these numbers are compared to May 2020 when stay-at-home orders were still in full force. However, the pandemic applied no meaningful downward pressure on residential prices in 2020. So, the large percentage YoY increases in median prices seen in the graphics above are not an artificial product of last year’s shut down. In fact, since only January, average prices are up ~27% in Austin and ~29% for the greater metro as a whole.

Here are some informative charts provided by Independence Title:

Based on the past 30 days of MLS sales, the median duplex price in Austin is around $520,000.  For a fourplex, the median sold price in Austin over the past 30 days has been $1M.

The median duplex unit rent in Austin is around $1,650/mo with a median 6 days on the market. A fourplex unit in Austin appears to command a median of roughly $1,275/mo in today's market with about 25 days on market. These are numbers for those leased through the MLS in the past 30 days.

The market is at a very interesting moment as we appear to be approaching an "end" to the pandemic. Home buyer behavior may shift as the economy opens up fully and people get busy resuming their previous lives. The Austin area market broke out wildly at the start of 2021 in search of a new level of pricing at which to settle. It will be interesting to see where the market eventually settles and whether the "return to normal" will soften demand enough to allow inventory to increase just a bit.