Austin Area Market Stats for April 16 to April 23 2020

[Beau Fannon]

April 23, 2020

Austin isn't slowing down. This market continues to defy national news headlines. Let's jump straight into the weekly numbers.

Residential sales have accelerated during the third week of April. Pending sales jumped by 313 homes! Even removing the 50 or so suspect pendings marked by builders, that's a net 263 jump in pending deals! Finalized home sales jumped 150 over last week! Our temporary off markets have also decreased. If this bump holds into next week, Austin has a very good chance of meeting or even exceeding our April 2019 home sales. It's going to come down to how fast can we close deals in the current economic climate.

Considering the massive imbalance between listings and pendings, it's safe to say that we are experiencing an inventory reduction. If inventory falls and the number of qualified buyers stays the same, prices will rise.

We'll need to watch for the number of back on markets (BOMs) to climb to know if we are having closing issues with unqualified buyers like they claim on the news. Since I am unaware of a reliable way to search for prior year BOMs, we'll have to wait and see what the weekly benchmark should be.

Sub $300k homes made up 39.3% of new listings, 43.3% of the BOMs, 46.2% of pendings, and 46.5% of this week's solds.

Luxury listings exceeding $850k made up 8.1% of new listings, 8.9% of BOMs, 4.1% of pendings, and 4.9% of this week's solds.

Leasing is looking marginally better than last week as it should considering where we are in the monthly cycle. Next week is the last week of the month and we should see a significant bump in these numbers. April 2019 had about 1900 leases signed. We are currently on track to meet or exceed that number.

Multi-family is tight as always. I don't expect big movements here until year end. Q4 2020 will tell us more about the state of our fellow investors as they prepare for tax season.

Austin Area Market Stats for April 16 to April 23 2020