Austin Rental Market Update – August 2009

The Austin rental market continues to be strong.Average and monthly rents continue to rise. Days on market is low. But, even with recent gains in prices, we are nearing the end of a decade in which rental prices for landlords will have remained virtually flat. Let’s check the historic graph below before we get into current figures.

austin-rental-market-200908

If we draw a straight line from 1999 to now, and you own the average rental home, and in 1999 you assumed a 3% per year increase in rents over time, that increase didn’t happen, but your property taxes, insurance and maintenance expenses sure did go up a lot. What we see above isn’t good from a landlord standpoint, but if you’re a renter, you’ve had a nice 10 year run of good rental values in Austin. At present, our rental values are still below where they were in the dotcom boom era of 2000 and 2001.

And if it’s any consolation, had you invested your real estate money in the stock market in 1999, you’d be a whole lot worse off than a decade of flat rents. At least real estate values have come up. We’ll look at that in a minute.

Currently in Austin, average rents for single family homes are about $1,500 per month and the median rents are $1295/mo. See the chart below.

Austin Real Estate Rental Market Update August 2009
Houses only (condos, duplexes, etc. not included) compiled from Austin MLS data

July 2009 Aug 2009 Aug 2008 Yr % Change
# Rented 1096 946 881 7.38%
Avg List $1,540 $1,520 $1,516 0.26%
Med List $1,325 $1,295 $1,300 -0.38%
Avg Rent $1,527 $1,508 $1,503 0.33%
Med Rent $1,300 $1,295 $1,300 -0.38%
Rent/List % 99.16% 99.21% 99.14% 0.07%
Avg SQFT 2000 1980 1979 0.05%
Med SQFT 1858 1807 1845 -2.06%
Avg $ SQFT $0.76 $0.76 $0.76 0.28%
Avg DOM 33 32 27 18.52%
Median DOM 23 24 19 26.32%
# Expired 32 38 66 -42.42%
# Withdrawn 133 144 137 5.11%
Not Rented 165 182 203 -10.34%
Not Rented % 13.08% 16.13% 18.73% -13.84%


For the most part, we’re not having any trouble getting our homes rented. Occasionally, just as it is in the sales market, we’ll have a slow mover, but not too often.

Leave a Comment