March Market Statistics

I’ll have more to say on this subject over the next few days as I assemble my updated Austin Market Dashboard.  For now, I just want to highlight some key statistics announced this morning.  This graphic summarizes:

The short version:  Supply (active listings) is down 28% compared to last year.  At the same time, Demand (sales) is up 16%.  As a result, current listing inventory represents about 2.6 months’ supply — 1.8 months less than the same time last year, and well under the 6-month supply that most analysts consider “balanced” market conditions. Average time to sell is now 64 days, down from 84 days a year ago.  Predictably, in that market environment, sales prices are rising — to a $220,000 median, up 10% from March 2013.

So far the influx of new listings is about the same pace as last year, so we are not on our way yet to getting supply and demand better matched, and as I mentioned in an earlier post (Austin real estate flying in 2013), the contribution of new home construction is constrained by platted land availability.  The trends reported for March 2013 will likely continue well into the summer this year.

More soon ….