The most recent area breakdowns are in the December sales market update. I run the area breakdowns every quarter. It takes a while to compile them so I can’t do it every month.

http ://crosslandteam.com/blog/2009/01/14/austin-real-estate-market-update-dec-2008-and-year-end/

Steve

Thanks for the good data here.

Bob V

Great work, much appreciated and if I did not already have a Realtor you would be high on my list. These numbers look great to me as a buyer, I think they may give some false hope to sellers who will start putting some of those failed sales back on the market. That along with the usual upsurge in listings heading into summer should give me lots to pick through in a month or two.

As a buyer I see this helping me as the numbers will not force people waiting to buy to jump in, the same people that have to buy will but it will definitely give false hope to some of those 50% expired listings to re-list which will just add inventory. On an insanity scale as I am not a Realtor, does this seem plausible?

Jason – this is a great market for your attendees to be in, ain’t it? If agent can “get it”, and gain traction in a soft market, that will do great when things turn around.

Shireen – yes, 13 months is too much inventory. This is the hardest thing to get sellers to understand, which is the high likelihood their home won’t be chosen by the market if it’s not really, really attractive in condition and price.

New Austin – I do the area breakdowns every quarter. The most recent was in Jan for the entire 2007/2008. You can find area 1b stats there. For 2008, 1B was down about 1% on avg sold, 7% on median sold, but up 3% on avg price per sqft sold. We have a 4/2 house, 1500 sqft in 1B listed for $475K, which would have been snapped up in a heartbeat a couple of years ago but at present it receives few showings. We’re either going to have to drop the price or lease it for another year or two.

Steve

The increase in Average Price and Median Price of the sold houses does not mean that the value of the average house increased. Let me be more specific. If you get 50 houses and recorded their value one year ago and see the same houses now, I would say that very likely most of them have their value decreased. And, at the same time, we do have increase in Average Price of the houses sold!
Looking at the number from January and February/2009 we have a very good example. I would do it against Feb/2008 if I had such numbers.
(I hope my table keeps the format)

Homes Sold. Jan/2009 vs Feb/2009
# Jan % Jan # Feb % Feb
$149,999 or under 266 34.55% 273 27.60%
$150,000 – $199,999 173 22.47% 241 24.37%
$200,000 – $249,999 104 13.51% 145 14.66%
$250,000 – $299,999 60 7.79% 115 11.63%
$300,000 – $349,999 61 7.92% 53 5.36%
$350,000 – $399,999 32 4.16% 48 4.85%
$400,000 – $449,999 23 2.99% 27 2.73%
$450,000 – $499,999 8 1.04% 21 2.12%
$500,000 – $549,999 8 1.04% 15 1.52%
$550,000 – $599,999 8 1.04% 8 0.81%
$600,000 – $699,999 10 1.30% 19 1.92%
$700,000 – $799,999 6 0.78% 5 0.51%
$800,000 – $899,999 2 0.26% 4 0.40%
$900,000 – $999,999 1 0.13% 1 0.10%
$1,000,000 or over 8 1.04% 14 1.42%
Total 770 989

It is easy to see why Feb/2009 has higher Average and Median Price compared to Jan/2009. The percentage of houses below $150K is lower in Feb (27.6% vs. 34.55%) and for most of the values above $250K, Feb has higher percentage.
So, that does not mean that most of the houses (on average) increased their price. It happened that we have more expensive houses being sold compared to previous month.
Usually the average of a big population is a good estimate of the average individual but it does not apply here. Why? Because we are not evaluating *all* the houses and taking its average. We are taking the average only of the houses that were sold. If, for any reason, we have more expensive houses sold, then its average will not express the real average of the value of the houses.

Another point is to look at SqFt of the houses sold. It is a good hint that more expensive houses were sold in Feb/2009.

You two do such a great job with your blog! Keep up the great work…the expired data sure is interesting. And I hope all of my grads are looking at the inventory supply instead of average DOM when they fill out the term in their listing agreements.