austin blog

Austin Real Estate Market – 2010 Breakdown by MLS Area

February 20, 2011

Below is a chart breaking down the 2010/2009 sales comparisons by MLS Area for the Austin real estate market. This time I’m adding a couple of new things. First, there is color coding on each of the summary rows for each area. A green shade indicates “improvement” in the measured metric. I put “improved” in [...]

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Is Rental Property Investing in Austin Still Profitable?

May 30, 2010

As someone who’s bought and sold a bunch of rentals, and helped other investors buy, sell and manage investment property in Austin for a number of years, I’m about to ask a question that might seem counter to my professional mission of being in service to real estate investors. Is rental property investing in Austin [...]

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Tax Credit Effect on Austin Real Estate Market

May 16, 2010

The $8,000 buyer tax credit ended April 30, 2010. Take a look at the following graph to see the effect the tax credit had on buyer activity in Austin TX.  This shows Pending activity for Austin MLS listings going back to Jan 2005 through April 2010. The green line is 2010. The previous years of [...]

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The Government Has Made Me Stupid About Real Estate

April 22, 2010

As we head into the final weekend preceding the final work week of April, and the $8,000 1st time homebuyer tax credit winds down (thank God), I’m seeing a surge of new Austin real estate listings coming on the market each day as well as a huge increase in the number of showings for most [...]

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Austin Real Estate Market Update – Nov 2009

January 5, 2010

Maybe I should start terming my Austin real estate market update blogs “Austin Real Estate Market, as Influenced by the Federal Government”. Indeed, the word “market” does need an asterisk next to it for the Sept-Nov time frame in Austin. Instead of taking its natural course, whatever that might have been, the lower end of [...]

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Austin Real Estate Market Update for August 2009 Sales

September 17, 2009

Austin Real Estate values for August 2009 are down about 5% from the same month last year. Average sales prices for the 1,657 houses that sold are down 5.12%. Median sold prices are down 4.80%. The number of houses sold is down 15% from August 2008, which is less of a decrease than we’ve seen [...]

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Rental Moveout Walk-through in South Austin

September 2, 2009

Yesterday, September 1st, I walked through a rental property in South Austin that had been vacated the day before. I had my Flip Mino Video Camera with me so I decided to make a short video of the walk-through and share a few things about what I look for when walking a vacant rental property [...]

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Austin Real Estate Market Update – July 2009 Stats

August 26, 2009

It’s getting real hard to write about the Austin real estate market when month after month it just keeps doing what is expected, treading water overall, doing well under $200K, especially close in, and still soft in the $400K+ price ranges. That really sums it up, month after month. At the beginning of the year [...]

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Austin Real Estate Market Inventory and Price Range Report – June 2009

July 30, 2009

Below is the breakdown of June 2009 home sales in Austin. Our median price range is roughly at $200K, so about half of all sales for June fall into the first two price ranges below $200K. The second colum shows Average days on market for homes sold in each price range. The third column shows [...]

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The true, honest to goodness, Sold to List price ratio for Austin

October 27, 2008

I noticed something interesting when I was previewing listings yesterday in Austin Lake Estates. Several homes were priced currently at more than $20K below the original list price (which appears at the bottom of the agent listing printout). This made me start wondering about how accurate our reported sold/list price ratio is, so I decide [...]

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