“For a market that has experienced several decades of strong population and employment growth, significant gains in both sales activity and housing costs across the region are to be expected as Austin expands into a large metropolitan area,” said Jim Gaines, an real estate expert with Texas A&M University, in a news release.
However, the local housing industry’s growth comes with challenges, ABoR representatives said, as local residents struggle to maintain affordable housing and compete with people moving into the city for limited inventory—as of March, the city of Austin had enough housing supply to provide just 0.4 months of demand.
“Our housing market is undergoing growing pains and creating a paradox—affordable from the outside looking in, but increasingly unaffordable for those who already call Austin home. While more homes are selling than ever before, it’s more and more difficult to find one,” ABoR President Susan Horton said in the news release.
In another March record, 3,603 homes were sold in the Austin area, 464 of them in Central Austin. On average, homes sold in 26 days, more than twice as quickly as in March 2020. According to ABoR, many of the buyers behind these transactions were from other large metropolitan areas, eyeing what are still comparatively lower prices in Texas’ most expensive housing market.
“There is a reason so many transplants, especially from the east and west coasts, are coming to Austin; they can buy more house for their money than what they could in the cities they are leaving behind,” Gaines said.
