Austin home sales continue to stabilize in April

Here are the April/2023 MLS single-family statistics for Austin, TX:

As I’ve mentioned over the past few months, the numbers above–which compare one month to the same month of the previous year–have been skewed this year.  This is due to our red-hot Covid real estate market winding down last year around May.  So, while the numbers above look very bleak, they don’t properly represent the current market for our Austin metro area.  To give a more accurate report, look at the graphic below which compares April, 2023 to the averages of the 5 Aprils prior to Covid (2015-2019).

There are still a lot of red categories above, for sure, but consider:

• Our listings were only 1,168 more than 2015-2019, or 19% higher.  This is a major drop from the 371% in April, 2023;

• Pendings are similar at only 7% down vs. 8% down;

• Sales were down 12% vs. 19%;

• Inventory was only .80 months higher at 3.1 vs. 2.3 for the pre-Covid months and technically still puts us in a seller’s market with nearly half of the 6.0 months that is considered a market in equilibrium (no advantage to buyers or sellers);

• Median and Average prices are both up by 19% and 20% respectively;

• Days on market, while still high at 72 is just 23 more than we averaged pre-Covid;

• Activity Ratio is only down 6% percentage points (29% vs 36%)

I’ll do this for May’s numbers but should be able to revert to my apples-to-apples comparison with June’s numbers since June/2022 was when the “Covid effect” began to wear off last year with the rapid increase in mortgage rates.