The rental market in Austin remains strong, helped further by the fact that there are in fact some qualified buyers who are electing to rent instead of buy because they fear that there is an Austin Real Estate bubble, and they don’t want to buy into that bubble. I’m not going to go into several paragraphs of “there isn’t a bubble” commentary, but there is not a real estate bubble in Austin TX.
To those buyers voluntarily taking yourselves out of the purchase market, the rest of the buyers thank you, as do all of us who own rental property. You’re helping create better purchase opportunities for the buyers who are smart enough to recognize this as a great time to buy a home in Austin, and you’re creating more demand for rental homes, which helps drives up rent prices. If you are qualified and ready to buy a home in Austin, and you know you will live there at least 2 years, there is absolutely no reason not to purchase a home in Austin TX today.
For September in Austin, average rents are up 6.7% over Sept 2006, from $1269/mo. a year ago to $1354 this September. Like the sales market, our number of homes rented is down over a year ago. The average and median days on market for rental homes is substantially better than a year ago at 43 days average, and 31 days median. This means half of all rental homes leased through the Austin MLS found a tenant in 31 days or less. Not bad.
September stats and year to date stats are below. I haven’t had time to do my area breakdowns, so I’m posting what I can and will try to catch up on the quarterly area breakdowns later this week.
Aug 2007 |
Sep 2007 |
Sep 2006 |
Yr % Change
|
|
# Leased |
765
|
570
|
650
|
-12%
|
Avg List Price |
$1394
|
$1368
|
$1285
|
6.5%
|
Median List Price |
$1225
|
$1207
|
$1195
|
1.0%
|
Avg Leased Price |
$1384
|
$1354
|
$1269
|
6.7%
|
Med Leased Price |
$1225
|
$1200
|
$1185
|
1.3%
|
Avg Size SQFT |
1871
|
1837
|
1844
|
0.3%
|
Median SQFT |
1766
|
1734
|
1731
|
0.2%
|
Avg $ per SQFT |
$0.74
|
$0.74
|
$0.69
|
7.2%
|
Avg Days on Mkt |
37
|
43
|
51
|
-16%
|
Median Days on Mkt |
31
|
31
|
42
|
-26%
|
Year to date stats are below.
Jan-Sep 2006
|
Jan-Sep 2007
|
Yr % Change
|
|
# Leased |
6329
|
6132
|
-3.1%
|
Avg List Price |
$1272
|
$1344
|
5.6%
|
Median List Price |
$1150
|
$1200
|
4.3%
|
Avg Leased Price |
$1260
|
$1341
|
6.4%
|
Med Leased Price |
$1150
|
$1200
|
4.3%
|
Avg Size SQFT |
1844
|
1873
|
1.6%
|
Median SQFT |
1750
|
1772
|
1.3%
|
Avg $ per SQFT |
$0.68
|
$0.72
|
5.9%
|
Avg Days on Mkt |
51
|
46
|
-9.8%
|
Median Days on Mkt |
42
|
34
|
-19%
|
Steve,
I have to agree with the numbers you’ve posted. Our inventory is much more stable than it has been in years, percentage of leases renewed is better than last year , lease rates have increased in most all areas and DOM is decreasing. As always, the owners that have properly maintained their investments have faired the best. Even though we’re into our slower season, we’re anticipating and planning for the trend to continue into the foreseeable future.