How's the Market in Steiner Ranch - April 2019

In this month's How's the Market in Steiner Ranch report I discuss the March sales stats and look at the past six-months of sales to get the full story on the sales statistics.  I typically don't spend a lot of time on the monthly numbers but I think this month calls for an explanation because of what the stats suggest.  Below the video, you can find the same information in chart and text formats.

To view summary and detailed sales information for all Steiner Ranch neighborhoods, check out the Neighborhood Home Sale Data section of my website. If you are looking to buy or sell a home in Steiner Ranch, contact me via email or at 512-650-7300. Previous editions of How’s the Market in Steiner Ranch are also available.  If you prefer to read instead of watch, here are the chart and transcript.
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Greetings!  I'm Craig Smyser with RE/MAX Capital City.  Welcome to the April 2019 edition of "How's the Market in Steiner Ranch."

In March, 19 resale homes closed in Steiner Ranch which was up 5.6% from March 2018.  The median price decreased 16.3% to $430,000.  The average price of a home decreased 11.5% to $480,108.  The average price per square foot decreased by 1.4% to $163.54.  I usually don’t elaborate on the monthly price changes, but I want to share some information with you this month.  I’m sure you hear all the reports that Austin housing prices just keep going up, but then I report a 16% drop for Steiner.  The reality is that we have a small data set and the drop is merely statistical because of the types of homes sold both this March and last March.  Of the 19 homes sold last month, 14 were under $500,000.  Compare that with March 2018 when only 8 of the 18 homes sold were under $500,000.  It was just the distribution of homes sold in each of those two months that makes the comparison seems like prices are dropping a lot in Steiner, but they are not.  Therefore, you can see why I always prefer to look at a longer time period to get a more accurate picture of the market.  But let me warn you, we’ve got some problems with this, too.  The number of resale homes in the last six months is 92, down 14.0% from the same time period the year prior.  The median price of a resale home has decreased 10.9% to $436,500.  The average price decreased by 7.3% to $505,323.  The average price per square foot increased 0.7% to $161.74.  So after I just told you that the monthly prices are problematic, we still see big price drops when looking at six-month rolling numbers.  As it turns out, the reason is the same.  If you watch this monthly video regularly, I’ve been talking about this for a while, but let’s recap again.  In the six-month period from October 2018 to March 2019, there were 60 homes that sold under $500,000.  Compare that to the same time period the year earlier when there were 58 homes sold at that price point.  That all sounds fine.  But, if we look at the number of homes at or over $500,000 that sold in the last six months, that number is 32.  For the same period a year earlier, the number sold was 49 – that’s over 50% higher.  So you can see that with the year prior have so many more high-end homes selling versus this year, the numbers show a drop in prices.   So, once again, what I see actually happening in the market is not a decline in prices, but sometimes the stats can show a deceptive picture.

The number of available resale homes at the end of March was 41, down 33.9% from last March. This number continues to be extraordinarily low and is a direct result of the few homes that are being offered for sale in Steiner Ranch.  Because this is becoming a running issue, its time to start providing you some hard numbers.  In March, 41 homes were listed for sale compared to 58 in March 2018 – a drop of 29.3%.  In the last six months, 124 homes were listed compared to 149 in the six-month period the year prior – a drop of 16.8%.  If you have any thoughts of selling your home, please contact me today so we can evaluate whether or not now is a good time to get on the market.  Across Steiner, the March sales ranged from a low of $430,000 to a high of $1,175,000.   The average sales price to list price ratio was 98.5%.  For homes that closed in March, the average days on market was 31, down from 54 last March.

As always, my website allows you to look at summary and detailed data for each Steiner Ranch neighborhood.  Simply go to RealEstateInAustin.com and click on the big red “Search Sold Data” button towards the bottom of the page.

Don’t forget to attend my annual workshop, How to Protest Your Property Tax Assessment.  The workshop will be held on Wednesday, April 24th at 7pm at the Towne Square Community Center.  I’ll explain the protest process, answer questions, and everyone who attends will receive relevant sales data to assist them with their own protest.

If you have any real estate related questions, please don’t hesitate to call me at 512-650-7300 or email me at [email protected].  Thanks for reading “How’s The Market in Steiner Ranch.”

Statistics based upon information from ACTRIS for the periods cited.

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