Steiner Ranch Housing Report - February 2015

In this edition of “How’s the Market in Steiner Ranch,” I talk about the January stats and how a small data set can create misleading results.  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.

Greetings!  I’m Craig Smyser.  Welcome to the February 2015 edition of “How’s the Market in Steiner Ranch.”  With this edition, I am retiring the new construction data I used to provide.  With just three neighborhoods left to build in Steiner, two of which are mostly complete, it doesn’t make sense for me to track them anymore. Further, the MLS doesn’t capture all new construction home sales so it has always been an incomplete picture anyway.  So let’s roll with the January numbers – all of which are for resale homes only.

In January, 9 homes closed in Steiner Ranch which was down 10.0% from January 2014.  Before I give you the pricing stats, I always like to mention that one-month figures can be very skewed because it is a small data set.  And this month, more than any other that I can recall, needs the disclaimer.  Of the 9 homes that sold, two were over $1 million.  To put that in perspective, in all of 2014, 8 homes sold over $1 million.  So you can see why some of the numbers I’m about to give you are not indicative of the Steiner market overall.  In January, the median price increased 7.8% to $498,500.  That looks good.  But, the average price of a resale home increased a jaw-dropping 63.5% to $803,555.  The average price per square foot increased by almost 31% to $181.67.  Averages are misleading which is why the most widely quoted statistic for housing prices is the median price.  Again, I provide the monthly stats because I know people like to keep tabs on them, but I prefer to look at longer time frames.  So let’s compare the prices from the past six months to the corresponding six-month period.  The median price of a resale home increased 8.7% to $424,500.  The average price increased by 19.0% to $532,453.  The average price per square foot increased by 9.4% to $152.81.

The number of available resale homes in January was 50, up 56.3% from last January.  While this is an increase from last year, the inventory is still fairly low at just over a two-month supply of homes on the market.  And as I record this in February, the number of available homes is quite a bit lower.  Once again this year, we have a low inventory right now.  If you are thinking of selling and want to avoid the increase of supply that will come in May, you should contact me today.

Across Steiner, the January sales ranged from a low of $380,000 to a high of $2,850,000.   The average sales price to list price ratio was 97.9%.  For homes that closed in January, the average days on market was 83.  Again, with the small data set, it took just a few homes with very long times on market to inflate this number.  I expect there will be a big drop next month.

As always, if you have any real estate related questions, please don’t hesitate to contact me via email or at 512-650-7300. Thanks for reading “How’s The Market In Steiner Ranch.”

Statistics based upon information from ACTRIS for the periods cited.