Here are the March/2017 MLS single-family statistics for Austin, TX:
Austin home sales in March continued the slowing trend toward a soft-landing, but we are still--currently--in a seller’s market. This is only our 4th & 5th bright red categories (10%+ negative trend) in the past 2 years--out of 168 individual categories during this time. In addition, it is the first month where we’ve had 2 bright reds since August, 2014. I expect us to have more months like this (when compared to the same month last year) for the next year or so as we slowly gravitate from a strong seller’s market to a market in equilibrium (ie-5-7 months). This matches what the Zillow report (Change is Coming. Really) I had shared with you in a previous post. In that report, 72% of experts expect the pendulum to swing back into home buyer’s favor by 2019. My advice to any home sellers: If you want/need to sell your home, make sure you have it in great shape, clean, staged properly, and priced right. By priced right, I mean use the old rule of thumb, “price to the future market”. This means to list your home slightly higher than the average price for comparable homes in a rising market and slightly lower in slowing market. Sellers who try to “test the market” to see if they can get a higher price will most likely end up chasing their too-high price down with price reduction after price reduction ending up with less than the market price they should have started at.