Austin Market Report - August 2021

[David Ivy]

The August 2021 Austin market numbers are out from the Austin Board of Realtors. The Austin market continues to stabilize after a wild run that saw Austin metro pricing rise nearly 40% YOY at its height. Closed sales were down again last month, and we’ve seen no significant month-over-month change in prices for several months now. However, we’re still in an extreme sellers market with only 0.9 months of inventory:

Here are the August 2021 numbers for the City of Austin and the 5-County Metro:

The August closed sales came in pretty much flat, which is slightly better than what we saw in July. The number of sales last month were actually very similar to what we saw pre-pandemic in 2019. We still saw incredibly strong YOY appreciation of +34% in the greater metro and +27% in the City of Austin.

We’ve now seen a few months trending toward stabilization and more predictable seasonal market behavior. The fall/winter will be predictably sluggish until the market roars back in late winter/spring of 2022, which is the normal pattern we’ve now come to expect year after year (aside from the pandemic and the 2008 housing recession). In present conditions, seller’s can’t “shoot the moon” with asking prices, and buyers won’t face outrageously intense competition seen in previous months. Sellers can, however, expect to sell their properties for much more than they could just 12 months ago, and buyers can still expect to face multiple offers and rising prices.

It’s important to understand that “normal” or “predictable” for the Austin metro market means a very robust seller’s market with low inventory and rising prices. The TAMU Real Estate Center defines a balanced market as one with around 6.5 months of inventory. At 0.9 months of inventory, Austin is very far from a balanced market and even farther from a buyer’s market with substantially falling prices.