Pflugerville - Hutto Edition | February 2023

In the last several months, the home sales market in the area have slowed due to a number of factors, including raised interest rates. The following data provides a picture of how that correction has taken shape versus the four years prior. HOME SALES ANALYSIS Round Rock Pugerville Hutto Williamson County Travis County

MEDIAN HOME SALES PRICE

After rising for the last several years, the price of local homes broken down by square feet has either dropped or slowed from December 2021 to December 2022. PRICE PER SQUARE FOOT

In the last year, the months of inventory, or amount of time it would take to sell all of the homes in an area, has increased to indicate a cooling market. MONTHS OF INVENTORY

For the rst time in the last ve years, the median home sales price has shown a year-over-year decrease from December 2021 to December 2022.

$51,000 $38,573 $33,005 $10,750 $25,000

$4 $16 $4 $7 $22

1.9 1.5 1.6 2.2 1.9

$600K

400

$500K

300

$400K

200

$300K

100

$200K //

2018 2019 2020 2021 2022

SOURCE: AUSTIN BOARD OF REALTORSCOMMUNITY IMPACT

open house on that property, and she ended up receiving more than 30 oers that were well above the asking price. That scenario represents a stark contrast to the market of late 2022 and early 2023, she said. “I just closed a listing in Round Rock a few weeks ago that sat on the market for over two months,” Jackson said. Even though the home market in 2021 and 2022 was still showing rapid home sales price increases throughout Central Texas every month, Jackson said it was much more attractive to buyers when interest rates were still hovering around 3%. Now that interest rates within the home lending market have roughly doubled since September 2021, Jackson said not only are hundreds of dollars being added to monthly mortgage payments, but other fac- tors are slowing the market as well. In June 2022, a home for sale in Pugerville spent an average of 24 days on the market. By December, that average jumped to 71, according to data from ABOR. Within the same timeframe in Round Rock the average days on market went from 19 to 60, and in Hutto that gure skyrocketed from 9 to 80. Though homes sales numbers can be

seasonal—March through June typically show higher sales according to real estate professionals— the average days on market in 2022 was much more volatile than previous years. For example in 2018, homes in Hutto spent an aver- age of 24 days on market in June and 51 in December. Another indicator of the slowed market is the amount of home inventory. The Texas A&M Real Estate Center denes this metric as the number of active listings in a given market divided by the aver- age number of sales per month during the prior 12 months. As the number of days homes spend for sale increase, the market continues toward what real estate professionals term balanced. Michele Sherwood, a Realtor for Keller Williams who services Williamson, Travis and Bastrop coun- ties, said in the Austin area, a balanced market will have about three months of inventory. In the Round Rock, Pugerville and Hutto com- bined market, months of inventory was at 2.1 months in December. In December 2021, it was at 0.5 months. Existing home sales appear to have been hit a lit- tle dierently than the new home market, according to Tiemann, who said builders will continue to add homes in the Blackhawk neighborhood until 2040.

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Area experts attribute the drop to a number of factors, including rising interest rates for nancing, buyer fatigue and continuing supply chain issues. However, industry professionals are also predicting that Central Texas home markets will return to steady year-over-year price increases in the next 18 months to two years as interest rates will likely go back down. One thing most experts agree on: The last few years in the Central Texas home market have been unparalleled. “The [COVID-19] pandemic [caused] the most unusual market I’ve ever seen,” said Rob Tiemann, who develops the Blackhawk master-planned com- munity in Pugerville. “Nobody has ever seen any- thing like it. Prices went up at unprecedented rates, and the interest rates were super low. Well, now inter-

est rates are up.” A cooling market

Ashley Jackson, president of the Austin Board of Realtors, said in spring 2022 she had a listing in Round Rock that was selling for about $400,000. Jackson said there was a line out the door for the

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