Housing prices dipped in Community Impact Newspaper’s Central Austin area last spring as stay-at-home orders stalled the city’s real estate market, with the median price declining to $525,000 by June before rebounding in the second half of 2020. The area’s median price has risen each month in 2021 so far, exceeding $600,000 every month since February. “One year ago, shelter-in-place orders effectively ground real estate transactions to a halt, leaving uncertainty in the market,” said ABoR President Susan Horton in a news release. “Last month’s housing market activity demonstrates not only a strong recovery since last spring, but significant growth beyond that recovery.”
Central Austin’s housing market is the steepest in the Austin area, but high prices abound throughout the city and its suburbs. Citywide, April home prices reached a new record median price of $550,562, up 31.7% year over year. Realtors in Austin closed 1,167 sales in April, with 422 of them in Central Austin—a more than 75% increase from last year’s slow April.
The area’s persistently increasing home prices are due to seriously low housing inventory in and around Austin, ABoR said. At 0.9 months of inventory, Central Austin has more supply than the Austin-Round Rock metro at large, which has only 0.5 months.
However, Horton said a close look at inventory numbers month over month hint at a light at the end of the tunnel.
“Austin-area housing inventory was slightly higher in April than in March, and the pace of home price appreciation month to month is slowing, indicating that the rush on the housing market at the beginning of the year could be easing,” she said.
In Central Austin specifically, however, the pace of appreciation remained strong in April, with median prices increasing 8.8% from March, following a 3.3% increase between February and March.
