Steiner Ranch Housing Report - March 2015

In this edition of “How’s the Market in Steiner Ranch,” I talk about the February stats and pricing trends.  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 March 2015 edition of “How’s the Market in Steiner Ranch.”  This month we’re going to take a closer look at some pricing trends.

In February, 20 homes closed in Steiner Ranch which was up 11.1% from February 2014.  The median price decreased 5.8% to $423,000.  The average price of a resale home decreased 11.2% to $460,460.  The average price per square foot increased by 2.6% to $149.49.  Like I mention all the time, one month is a small data set so the numbers can always be skewed.  This month, I want to show you exactly what I mean.  The drop in both the median and average prices does not depict what I am seeing in the market.  Sometimes it just happens to be an unusual set of numbers to compare.  If you look at February 2014, only three of the homes sold under $400,000 and 7 sold over $600,000.  However, in February 2015, 9 homes sold under $400,000 and only 4 sold over $600,000.  Does that mean that a bunch of $600,000+ homes fell in value?  Of course not!  I just so happens to be the homes that sold in the months being compared were vastly different and, in this case, shows a decline in the median price.  That’s why I like to always use six-month time frames to compare prices – so that we can smooth out spikes and drops.  But even that isn’t foolproof – especially when the four of the last six months are traditionally the slowest of the year.  Let me demonstrate by comparing the last six months to the corresponding six-month period from a year earlier.  The median price of a resale home decreased 1.2% to $409,997.  The average price increased by 14.6% to $536,453.  The average price per square foot increased by 7.8% to $154.47.  So even with a six-month time window, we see a huge difference between the median price and the average price.  While these numbers don’t go hand-in-hand all the time, it is unusual to see this big spread.  This is the breakdown of home sales by price range for Steiner for all of 2014.  It is fairly typical for what we see in a given year for the relationships of distribution.  Now compare to the last six months.  What you see is that there is a bulge in the entry-level price points, followed by a lower-than usual number of mid-range homes.  This is what is bringing down the median value.  As a reminder, the median is the mid-point price in the range of prices.  On the other hand, the average price has spiked because of an unusually high number of high-end homes selling with six over the past six months – one of these was almost $5 million and another was over $2 million.  While the six of them really don’t have an impact on the median, it has a big impact on the average.  So there you have it.  One set of numbers shows prices falling 1% while another shows prices increasing almost 15%.  The real answer is somewhere in between.  As we get into the spring and see more sales, we’ll get a clearer picture.

Let me wrap this up with a few more stats.  The number of available resale homes in February was 39, down 13.3% from last February.  As the number of homes available changes every day, I can tell you the numbers are certainly increasing as we approach the stronger spring market.  If you are thinking of selling and want to avoid the increase of supply that will come in May, you should contact me today because time is running out to beat the bulge.

Across Steiner, the February sales ranged from a low of $314,000 to a high of $795,000.   The average sales price to list price ratio was 99.0%.  For homes that closed in February, the average days on market was 69.

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.