The Austin area’s housing market continued its strong climb in 2015, setting a record for the number of single-family homes sold and surpassing all-time highs for home prices.
The pace of sales and higher-than-even prices created strong profits for the vast majority of the 29,068 homeowners who sold their homes in 2015. The average price of an Austin area home reached $333,558 in 2015 — an 8 percent increase over 2014. The median price climbed by 9 percent to hit $263,900. And the total sales volume hit $9.6 billion, more than a billion more than 2014.
Those record prices continue to raise questions remain about how Austin can provide more affordable options as demand pushes prices ever higher.
“Low housing inventory levels, rising home prices and high housing development costs have brought Austin’s housing affordability issues to critical levels,” said Aaron Farmer, 2016 President of the Austin Board of Realtors. “Median price for single-family homes in the Austin area increased nearly $30,000 in the last year alone.”
And figures from the month of December show prices are poised to continue to climb. The median price hit $270,000, a 10 percent increase from the same month in 2014. And the pace of sales increased 5 percent year-over-year to 2,390 transactions.
“The Austin Board of Realtors plans to build upon the past year’s efforts to advocate for a more affordable Austin, which included supporting Mayor Adler’s Housing Our Heroes initiative and advocating for permanent tax relief for Austin homeowners at the polls last November,” Farmer said. ‘It’s crucial that Austin continues to make strides with pivotal policy issues in 2016 to improve the land development code through CodeNEXT and take next steps to achieve more stringent code enforcement.”
Austin’s booming economy continues to attract new residents, pushing up demand for housing. And Austin’s inventory has been unable to grow significantly over the past 12 months. Its inventory in December floated at 2.2 months. That’s less than half of the available homes the Real Estate Center at Texas A&M University considers a balanced market.
Meanwhile, Austin-area condo sales decreased in 2015. The 3 percent decrease — a total of 3,057 sales — happened while prices increased 6 percent since 2014.
Here’s a look at all the year-end stats:
- 29,068 – Single-family homes sold, five percent more than 2014.
- $263,900 – Median price for single-family homes, nine percent more than 2014.
- $333,558 – Average price for single-family homes, eight percent more than 2014.
- 49 – Average number of days that single-family homes spent on the market, two days more than 2014.
- 36,810 – New single-family home listings on the market, four percent more than 2014.
- 6,044 – Active single-family home listings on the market, five percent more than 2014.
- 29,839 – Pending sales for single-family homes, five percent more than 2014.
- $9,695,852,178 – Total dollar volume of single-family properties sold, 13 percent more than 2014.
