“July 2020 established the all-time high watermark for home sales in the region due to pent-up housing demand after several months of stay-at-home orders and increased consumer purchasing power,” Susan Horton, 2021 ABoR President, said in a statement released along with the report. “As we have moved away from the post-COVID boom, the market has begun to stabilize.”
While the number of homes sold fell in the ABoR’s year-over-year comparison, the median price of a home in the five counties that makeup the Austin-Round Rock area increased 37.1% to $480,000. That is a record for the month of July, according to the ABoR report.
In west Travis County, the Lake Travis-Westlake region saw a median price increase of 34.4% to $871,000. The region includes the cities of West Lake Hills, Bee Cave and Lakeway, and as a group, saw the total number of homes sold drop 23.3% when compared to July 2020. That is a significantly larger drop than the 9.9% decrease for the metro area.
The Lake Travis-Westlake area also has a larger inventory of homes, according to the ABoR report. The current housing inventory for West Travis County sits at 1.1 months compared to the metro area’s 0.9 months of inventory. Homes in the area spent 20 days on the market compared to 12 days across the Austin-Round Rock metro area.
Summer activities might partially explain the lower volume of homes sold, Horton said.
“The typical seasonality for the summer returned as people re-engaged in other activities, including travel,” she said.
A monthly year-over-year decline in home sales has not occurred in the Austin-Round Rock metro area since May 2020.
