Steiner Ranch Housing Report - February 2022

The January sales stats don't look as strong as we've been accustomed to recently, but I assure you, the market is still quite strong in Steiner Ranch. If you'd prefer to read the report, the transcript can be found below the video.

Greetings!  I'm Craig Smyser with 1835 Realty.  Welcome to the February 2022 edition of "How's the Market in Steiner Ranch.”

In January, 6 resale homes closed in Steiner Ranch which was down 45.5% from January 2021.  This is the lowest number of monthly home sales than I can recall – and I looked back ten years just to double check.  Again, this is because we have so few homes available for sale.  Now, the pricing is interesting and I’ll explain in a minute.  The median price in January increased just 3.4% to $813,600.  The average price of a home increased an 10.2% to $950,450.  The average price per square foot increased by 18.5% to $290.18.  While these numbers would normally be very good, they aren’t what we are used to seeing lately. In this case, it’s simply that we have a very small data set with only six homes and the distribution of the prices doesn’t really paint a true picture.  So instead, let’s focus more on the six-month numbers since it is a bigger data set encompassing more time.  The number of resale homes sold during the past six months is 112, down 23.3% from this same time frame the year prior.  The median price of a home has increased 28.7% to $808,450.  The average price increased by 30.4% to $909,023.  The average price per square foot increased 39.0% to $284.23.  So these numbers are more line with what I see in the market.  The last few months of 2021 saw less activity than the earlier parts of the year. If you watched the last episodes, you already know there were fewer buyers, fewer multiple offer situations, and fewer homes selling over list price.  The closings in January really reflect what the market was doing when contracts were written in December.  I can tell you that the frenzy of the market has returned so the numbers for the next few months will be strong.

The number of available resale homes at the end of January was 6, down 14.3% from last January.  The number of new homes put on the market in January was just 11, down 35.3% from the 17 last January.  It just continues the trend of tight inventory in Steiner and around Central Texas for that matter.  That means that this is a great time to sell.  Demand is high and there is little competition.  I sound like a broken record, but if you’ve had any thoughts of selling, contact me now.  Seriously, pause the video and call me, text me, email me, just do it now.  If you need to sell your current home to buy the next one, that makes it more difficult, but certainly not impossible.  There are ways to do it and I will explain all of it to you and guide you through the process.  Back to the stats.  Across Steiner, the January sales ranged from a low of $678,000 to a high of $1,400,000.   The average sales price to list price ratio was 99.2% and for homes that closed in January, the average days on market was 68 – no I didn’t misspeak, days on market was 68 up from 11 last January.  Now, that 68 days on market certainly needs an explanation.  A few months ago I talked about Opendoor and how last year they bought a number of Steiner homes well over market value.  Then they listed them at even higher prices.  So most Opendoor homes take a while to sell as they keep lowering the price.  Of the six homes that sold in January, two were Opendoor with long days on market so they really messed up that stat this month.  Do not be fooled properly marketed and priced homes will not take 68 days to sell.

One of the reasons for increased demand right now is that home loan interest rates are rising.  A 30-year fixed rate home loan is around 3.75% right now.  Rates will go a bit higher this year so that’s why we see many buyers trying to get in now.  While I’ll spare you from my full-fledged rant about home loan interest rates compared to the Fed Funds rate, please understand when the Fed announces an interest rate hike, that is the not the interest rate on home loans.

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 watching “How’s The Market in Steiner Ranch.”

Statistics based upon information from ACTRIS for the periods cited.