(Article is from Austin Business Journal, copyright belongs to owner) Austin isn’t the only metro in the Lone Star State in the middle of a housing frenzy.
In fact, prices are going up across the entire state, with the four largest metro areas seeing at least 15% increases year over year. Statewide, home prices went up 19.1% between Q2 of 2020 and Q2 of 2021, according to data from Texas Realtors.
Still, Austin wears the heaviest crown, with both the highest median home price and the largest increase year-over-year.
The statewide median home price is $300,490, and nearly a third of homes in Texas sold for between $200,000 and $299,000 over the course of the year.
Much rarer were homes listed between $400,000 and $499,000 — homes at these price points made up only 11.6% of houses sold. In the Austin metro, however, the median house is at the higher end of that range, coming in at $482,364 in June, according to the Austin Board of Realtors.
These price spikes are not solely because of the pandemic, experts said. In fact, home prices have been rising in Texas for years.
Price isn’t the only metric showing the strain on the Texas real estate market.
Active listings across the state were down more than 42% year over year, with 48,971 homes on the market in Q2 of 2021. The statewide housing inventory is sitting at 1.4 months, compared to 2.9 months at this time last year.
In this category, too, Austin is posting the most notable numbers. Inventory in the Austin metro area was at 0.6 months in Q2, almost half that of the Dallas metro. Houston had 1.6 months of inventory, and San Antonio had 1.3. Experts like to see about six months of housing inventory.
