Steiner Ranch Housing Report - March 2012

In this edition of How’s the Market in Steiner Ranch?, I review a few of the monthly sales stats, give my interpretation of them, and continue the discussion of the sudden drop in available homes across in Austin and Steiner Ranch.

To view summary and detailed information for all Steiner Ranch neighborhoods, check out the Neighborhood Home Sale Data. If you are looking to buy or sell a home in Steiner Ranch, contact me at 512-650-7300, by email, or the form below. If you prefer to read instead of watch, here the transcript:

Transcript

Greetings! I’m Craig Smyser. Welcome to the March 2012 edition of “How’s the Market in Steiner Ranch?” In addition to looking at the current statistics, I’ll once again discuss the low inventory of available homes throughout Austin and Steiner Ranch. In February, 17 homes closed in Steiner Ranch which was up 6% from February 2011. Of the 17, 14 were resale and 3 were new construction homes. Of last year’s 16 sales, 12 were resale, so if you look only at existing home sales, this past February was up by about 17% . Keep in mind that many new construction homes are not listed in the MLS so I cannot provide accurate data on new construction numbers in Steiner Ranch. From this point forward, all the stats quoted are for resale homes only. Of the 14 sales in February, 1 was a foreclosure. As always, when we are looking at small sets of data such as one month in Steiner Ranch, I don’t like to compares prices from one year to the next because they can be volatile. For the record, the average price of a resale home decreased 2.5% to about $410,993 and the median price increased 8.5% to $357,000 over last February. The average price per square foot increased by 2.3% to $125.59. Last month, the sale prices in Steiner ranged from $227,000 to $855,000. The number of available homes in February was 77, down about 14% compared to the previous February but up over January which is a typical trend for this time of year. The average sales price to list price ratio was 97.6% while the average sales price to original list price was 93.8%. For homes that closed in February, the average days on market was 89. 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 neighborhood home sale data tab.

I want expand upon last months topic of the low number of homes available in the Austin area and in some areas of Steiner Ranch. I am referring to homes that are active in the MLS – it does not include homes already under contract. The number of available homes in the greater Austin-area now sits at just over 6,500, the lowest number since February 2002 (see larger version of the graph here).

[Please note this graph shows single-family detached homes only while the graph I used last month showed all property types – including manufactured homes, for example. I believe this is a better representation for the purposes intended here]. Also interesting to note is the high of almost 12,000 was hit less than two years ago and we’ve dropped 45% since then. The driver for this low inventory is not that we have so many more buyers in the market, but simply fewer people are attempting to sell their house at this time. While I fully expect this number to increase as we head into the stronger selling months, it means that right now is a great time to be selling in most market segments if the house is priced appropriately. We have not yet seen prices really moving upward yet, but the potential is there if this tight market continues. Looking specifically at Steiner Ranch, there at 67 resale homes available today. However, only 11 are available at or under last year’s median price of $345,000. That means only 16% of the available resale homes are in the price range at which half of them sold last year. Of the homes under contract, though, 45% are in this price range. Clearly, this is a very tight market and if you have a home in this price range you plan to sell, I’d suggest you contact me to get it on the market asap. On the other hand, 40% of the available homes are priced above $500,000 – a range in which we had about 20% of last years homes sold and currently about 20% of the under contract homes – so that market is better for buyers, but an able agent like me can certainly get your home sold in this price range as well. This demonstrates why it is always important to understand your specific market and not just the overall market. And that, of course, is one of the things I do.

As always, if you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to contact me at 512-650-7300, by email, or the form below.

Thanks for watching “How’s The Market In Steiner Ranch?”

  Statistics based upon information from ACTRIS for the periods cited.