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Market News and Trends

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First-half 2019 Market Performance

A few weeks ago I promised to update my market dashboard through June. I’ll add some comments later about the dashboard and about what how our market behaved January-June 2019. To start, here are the primary metrics I have watched for many years: The first chart isn’t as complicated as it looks. The orange line … Continue reading

Case-Shiller Index and Austin

In 2010 and 2011 the Case-Shiller cities experienced market weakness more dramatically than Austin did, and the Austin market maintained faster growth since the 2012 recovery than the Case-Shiller cities. Continue reading

Five Star Market Heat Index

The Real Estate HEAT (Housing Experts Anticipating Trends) Index
is a monthly leading indicator of nearly 40 housing markets in the
U.S. Five Star Professional partners with thousands of real estate agents who complete a weekly survey about the conditions they are observing in their marketplace. Continue reading

Update on “days on market”

Since 2014 Days to Sell has trended upward and selling has required more price reductions. It isn’t a concern at this point, but worth being aware of. Continue reading

Lake-area homes and lake water levels

The Highland Lakes are an important feature that makes the Austin area and the nearby Hill Country wonderfully attractive and enjoyable. They are also an important part of the region’s economy, and the water level in the lakes matters! Continue reading

Buyer Beware

The real estate industry has been battling wire fraud over the past few years. Here’s what you need to know. Continue reading

RE/MAX Housing Report – April 2019

RE/MAX publishes it’s housing report on or about the 15th of each month. They’re available at CentralTexasHomeSearch.com. Just go to Market News and then to RE/MAX Housing Report. The May 2019 report will be available soon, but here is the most current issue for now: You can always get my analysis and comments on Austin … Continue reading

Beyond price …

In Pricing to Sell I commented on the importance of pricing correctly in achieving a timely sale and getting the highest price that the market will allow. ” … Timely sale …” and “… that the market will allow ….” are critical to understand because regional market velocity is driven by broad supply and demand … Continue reading

Housing affordability in the Austin area

Earlier this year I wrote about the distribution of sales prices in Central Texas (Home Prices in Austin and More on Austin-area Home Prices). Since housing affordability is so often a topic of conversation these days, I want to offer some thoughts on that subject now. As a starting point, this chart shows the relative … Continue reading

Entering the 2019 selling season … with challenges

Demand is not the problem. We have a lot of new jobs being created and steady population growth. We simply don’t have enough homes to meet the demand, and the perceived price vs. value equation for many buyers got out of hand as a result. Continue reading

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