austin real estate market 3 - Crossland Real Estate

Tax Credit Effect on Austin Real Estate Market

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 2007, 2008, 2009 are represented by the other colored lines.

I used Pending listings because a lot of the April Pending sales haven’t closed yet, but anything that qualified for the tax credit would have to be Pending by April 30th, so this gives us a sneak peek at what the sales data will look like for May closed sales.

A couple of interesting things to note here. I went back to 2007 because that was the peak year for Austin. As you can see on the chart, April Pending listings exceeded the peak year of 2007 for April. I suspect we’ve never experienced an April in Austin where almost 3,000 homes received accepted offers.What does this mean for the future?

With Buyer Tax Credit Over, What’s Next for Austin Real Estate

by Steve Crossland

With the April 30th expiration of the home buyer tax credit, it’s time for buyers, Austin sellers and Austin Realtors to figure out what happens next. Austin Sellers who didn’t get offers might wonder, “are the buyers all gone now?” Austin Buyers who didn’t get their act together and claim the tax credit might wonder, “did I miss the boat?” Realtors in Austin are wondering if business might dry up as the market takes a breather while the hangover wears off. Here’s what I think.

Sellers
Many Austin Sellers in the sub-$250K price ranges placed homes on the market earlier this year, sooner than they otherwise would have, hoping of course to catch the wave of tax credit buyers. This is something we encouraged, and rightly so, as many of these homes did in fact sell. These “timing opportunist” sellers include both motivated sellers and fair weather “let’s see what happens” sellers.

The latter group of sellers with unsold homes will start removing homes from the market fairly quickly as they’re already experiencing the early stages of “seller fatigue”, and might now feel discouraged. They don’t really have to sell anyway, but would have if the right offer had come along. It just didn’t happen. If I’m right about this, the May real estate market stats for Austin will show a spike in Expired/Withdrawn listings.

The Government Has Made Me Stupid About Real Estate

by Steve Crossland

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 of our own listings.

In other words, supply and demand are in a foot race with each other, and both have kicked in the after-burners.

This has caused us, as real estate agents, to behave in abnormal ways as we advise buyers and sellers. I had to tell a seller last week, “I think it’s better that we get your home on the market right away in ‘good enough’ condition rather than burn up a week of market time putting it into ‘perfect’ condition”. Mainly, I didn’t want to burn through one of only two remaining weekends waiting for new flooring to be installed or our professional stager and photographer to do their thing.

Instead, Sylvia staged the house herself, the seller bought some mulch and plants, we left some worn out old sheet vinyl on the kitchen floor, didn’t have the carpets shampooed, and I took my own photos, which look ok but not great. We got that sucker listed and in the MLS 2 days after I first met the seller at the property. Met on a Monday, had it in the MLS on Wednesday. Had our first offer that weekend, though that one didn’t pan out because it was too low.

Why the rush, and is this the right thing to do? I don’t know.

Austin Real Estate Market Update – Feb 2010 Sales

by Steve Crossland

The Austin real estate market for Feb 2010 remained about the same as February a year ago. None of the measurable price metrics changes by more than a percent or two. Homes are selling faster though, and the number of failed listings (Expired/Withdrawn) is down considerably. Days on market is down 13% and the number of Exp/Withdrawn listings is down 13% also. This indicates perhaps a swelling in momentum.

Sylvia and I are seeing increased activity both with buyer inquiries and activity on our listings. Other agents we talk to are saying the same. The current tax credit incentive ($8K for first time buyers, $6,500 for move-up buyers) expires soon. Offers must be written by April 30th to qualify for the tax credit. This seems mainly to be motivating first timers. We haven’t heard from any move-up buyers motivated by collecting a $6,500 tax credit. The move-up credit is a farce because it requires the recipient to complete two real estate transactions, the cost of which would exceed the $6,500 credit. Only the people who were going to move up anyway will benefit from this useless freebie.

Upcoming factors to keep an eye on include the discontinued buying of mortgage backed securities by the government on March 31st. This has provided a marketplace for loans and kept interest rates artificially low, perhaps by as much as 1.5%. Interest rates should rise throughout the rest of 2010 and will probably be in the 6%+ range by the start of next year.

Then on May 1st, the tax credit ends which, combined with rising interest rates, could put the skids on demand in the lower price ranges. We need the lower price ranges to do well because the sellers of those homes become the buyers of the mid range homes. Of course there remains the national economy and unemployment as well. Improvement in the economy will lift consumer confidence and jobs numbers, which will positively affect the real estate market.

Below is the chart of stats for Feb 2010. Further below are the year to date and inventory stats.

A Closer Look at Failed Listings in Austin 1999-2009

by Steve Crossland

We all know that some Austin MLS listings don’t sell. The reasons vary, but when demand is insufficient to absorb supply, the prettier better priced homes win, and the sellers who love their homes, and express that love and devotion through too-high list prices, get to continue the romance.

Let’s see what that looks like when put on a graph.

This is one of my favorite real estate statistical charts. The relationship between the number of successful sales efforts and the number failed sales efforts in any given market tells us a lot. This graph shows what happened to the relationship of success/failure of Austin’s MLS listings immediately following dot.com boom, 9/11 in 2001, and the subsequent bleeding out of jobs over the next few years. The real estate market became saturated with homes for sale as people had to leave Austin to find jobs, and new people stopped coming.

If you’ve seen the Austin real estate sales history graph that I post every month, you’ll know that home values stayed flat from 2002 through the end of 2005. Volume held steady during that period, but prices were flat while the rest of the country had its massive real estate bubble.

For Austin, there was no bubble. Instead, we suffered with too many homes for sale, not enough buyers, and thus in 2003 the number of listings that departed the Austin MLS as failed sales efforts (Expired or Withdrawn) actually exceeded the closed sales for the entire year. Austin sellers had it rough in 2003.

We’ve recently seen this inverted Sold/Not Sold ratio a lot during recent months throughout 2008 and 2009, but neither year ended with more total failed sales than successful sales. So, in that regard, these past couple of years haven’t been as bad as 2003.

Wanna know what happened to all those unsold homes in Austin between 2002 and 2005, back when foreclosing or short selling was still such a shameful event that sellers knuckled down and figured out how to hang on? A bunch of them became rental properties. This in turn caused a severe over-supply of Austin’s rental home market. Simultaneously, the in-migration that feeds the rental market stopped cold, and the chart below shows the result.

Austin Real Estate Market Update – Jan 2010 Stats

by Steve Crossland

The Austin real estate market started 2010 on an upswing. Average sold price is up 5.39% from a year ago, median sold price is up 2.12%, days on market are down. In fact, every measured metric on the chart below moved in a positive direction except for median list price, which is down slightly, but of no consequence. Let’s have a look.

Austin Real Estate Sales Market Update – January 2010
Homes only (condos, duplexes, etc. not included) compiled from Austin MLS data
	Dec 2009	Jan 2010	Jan 2009	Yr % Change
# Sold	1323	823	816	0.86%
Avg List	$274,819	$259,858	$249,289	4.24%
Med List	$199,740	$188,000	$189,700	-0.90%
Avg Sold	$262,574	$247,767	$235,101	5.39%
Med Sold	$194,000	$184,000	$180,189	2.12%
Sold/List %	95.54%	95.35%	94.31%	1.10%
Avg SQFT	2283	2220	2170	2.30%
Med SQFT	2049	2043	1942	5.20%
Avg $ SQFT	$115.01	$111.61	$108.34	3.01%
Avg DOM	82	78	82	-4.88%
Median DOM	48	50	66	-24.24%
# Expired	852	394	544	-27.57%
# Withdrawn	696	577	701	-17.69%
Not Sold	1548	971	1245	-22.01%
Not Sold %	53.92%	54.12%	60.41%	-10.40%

So, is this good news? Maybe. I don’t think sellers should get too excited, and buyers need not start worrying about rising prices. Jan 2009 was a down month, so topping it is nothing to brag about. Nevertheless, I do think our Austin real estate market has sunnier weather ahead, at least for the first half of the year.

The extended tax credit and continued low interest rates will motivate buyers in the lower ranges. An improving job market and the return of good job news, (some of which was announced today with Facebook bringing 200 new jobs and a Solar Panel company bring several hundred more), will cause an already “ok” Austin unemployment rate to keep dropping through the summer, barring any terrible macro-economic setbacks in the national economy. Once interest rates starts rising, as we expect later in the year, that will frighten some additional buyers into getting off the fence for fear of missing out on the good rates.

I think the upper end market will be slower to come back as many of the former $500K to $800K buyers will, I think, scale back lifestyles and settle for less Austintacious digs. Mercedes Homes said as much during a lunch presentation I heard today. They’ve redesigned a bunch of new floorplans to accomodate what their research says will be a more frugal market in the $300K and up range, as buyers seek smaller, better quality homes instead of sprawling big layouts. Makes since to me.

Below are some additional charts and stats. Let’s start with the 23 month lookback chart.

Tax Credit Effect on Austin Real Estate Market

With Buyer Tax Credit Over, What’s Next for Austin Real Estate

The Government Has Made Me Stupid About Real Estate

Austin Real Estate Market Update – Feb 2010 Sales

A Closer Look at Failed Listings in Austin 1999-2009

Austin Real Estate Market Update – Jan 2010 Stats

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