Austin Market Price Distribution

I comment frequently about home prices in the Austin area (most recently in Market Dashboard – 2017 recap), but it has been a while since I shared the overall distribution of residential sale prices across the Austin metropolitan area.

We’ll come to the data a little later, but this chart shows the important trends in pricing of houses, condominiums, and townhouses in the 5-county metro area:

Here are the highlights:

• The decline in sales below $150,000 was obvious for all seven years shown in the graph above.
• The $150,000 to $200,000 price range still contributed about 20% of all sales through 2015, but had slipped a little even then.  Then sales in that price range plummeted in 2016 and 2017.
• The percentage contribution of all other price ranges has been rising steadily throughout the period shown.
• Sales between $400,000 and $500,000 represented 10% of all home sales for the first time in 2016.
• Homes sold in the $500,000 to $750,000 range reached 10% of total sales in 2017.

With those high points identified, here are more details:

In the top half of that table, I highlighted the years in which each price range peaked over the past seven years.  Note an important difference in 2016 and 2017 — double peaks, in the $200,000 to $250,000 range and between $300,000 and $400,000.  Unless new home builders get very busy building under $250,000 (unlikely), I don’t expect we will see that happen again in 2018.

In Home prices are up in Austin, but … I discussed the ten year period that ended in 2014.  At that time, you could still shop under $200,000 and see a little more than half of the area’s active listings.  In 2017, you had to be looking at homes up to $300,000 to see half of all listings.  I fully expect that point to move up to the $300,000 to $400,000 range in 2018.

In Market Dashboard – 2017 recap), you saw that I expect 2018 to be another fast-paced year for Austin-area real estate.  With that in mind, we’re not done yet with upward pressure on home prices, and I would expect 5% to 6% increases generally, about the same as the last couple of years.