Bill Morris on Austin Real Estate

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2025 is complete … here’s the data

I haven’t presented my complete market dashboard for a while, but final data for December is available now and I want to share the results for the year in context with the rest of this very long market cycle.

This chart shows the extreme changes in our supply-and-demand picture in 2025, with the number of active listings soaring from 8,600 in December 2024 to 14,824 in June 2025 and then sinking to 10,291 in December 2025. That was a72% increase in the first half of the year followed by a 31% inventory decrease in the second half. While that happened the number of homes sold averaged about 2,500 across the year with no remarkable changes. The months’ supply metric reached 5.9 months in June and July and ended the year at 4.1 months’ supply.:

Our industry long considered a 6-month supply of inventory “normal,” but you can see that the green dotted line shows a very different environment for the 12 years from 2013 through 2024. This market cycle, complicated by the COVID pandemic and significant disruptions in construction labor and materials, lead us now to discover a new “normal.”

The ratio of home sales to available listings was the lowest in 2025 that we have seen in this entire cycle:

Historically, the Spring and Summer have been the strongest seasons for selling in residential real estate, and you can see that in the early years of this cycle. That changed, with December demand peaks in 2017 and 2019, March peaks in 2020 and 2021, and a February peak in 2022. Seasonality in sales is not at all pronounced, or even visible, in the past three years, 2023 through 2025.

Finally, I have commented many times about the problematic trend in home prices in the Austin metropolitan area:

In that chart and the one showing sales and listings, you can see that the demand for homes turned steeply upward in 2021, driving average and median prices much higher. The average sale price rose from $458,000 in January 2021 to $681,000 in May 2022 — 49% growth in 16 months! The median price in our market changed in the same way, up 52%, from $363,000 to $550,000, in 15 months. Average prices have essentially stayed flat since the 2022 peak, while median prices have trended downward.

You’ll see several other posts earlier this month at BillMorrisRealtor.com. Most market watchers remain cautious about our market conditions in 2025, and I agree. I don’t see clear signs or reasons for short-term improvement, but I will keep you informed here.