Steiner Ranch Housing Report - May 2014

In this edition of How’s the Market in Steiner Ranch, I review the April 2014 home sale stats and sound a cautious note about increasing inventory.  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 at 512-650-7300, by email, or use the form below. Click here for previous editions of How’s the Market in Steiner Ranch.
If you prefer to read instead of watch, here are the chart and transcript:

Transcript

Greetings!  I’m Craig Smyser.  Welcome to the May 2014 edition of “How’s the Market in Steiner Ranch.”

In April, 33 homes closed in Steiner Ranch which was up 3% from April 2013.  For the first time in several months, there was one new construction sale.  Keep in mind, many new construction homes are not listed in the MLS, so I can’t provide accurate data on the new construction sales.  Looking at resale homes only, there were 32 sales in April which was up 18.5% from last year.  From this point forward, all the stats quoted are for resale homes only.  I want to preface the pricing stats by saying that while these numbers are great, I am concerned with changes I am seeing.  Before discussing those changes, here’s the pricing information. The average price of a resale home increased almost 23% to $507,969.  The median price increased by 27% to $451,000.  The average price per square foot increased by 15.6% to $150.05.  The numbers are still extremely strong when we smooth it out by looking at the last six months and comparing it to the same six-month period from the prior year.  The average price increased 20% to $495,752, the median price increased 16.8% to $435,500, and the average price per square foot increased 13.1% to $146.60.  As a homeowner in Steiner Ranch, I love these numbers.  As a real estate broker, I don’t think the stats quite match reality for a few reasons. First, in this current six-month period, 6% of the homes sold under $300,000 compared to 25% in the prior period.  Yes, prices are rising so we expect to see an increase, but we just don’t have as many homes in this tier selling this year versus the last period.  Second is the exact opposite, as we’ve had more high-end homes selling this period than last.  Not just that the prices are higher, but simply homes of that size and caliber have had more sales this past period.  I really think it is safe the say that the average home hasn’t increased 20% over the past year although the average price for Steiner Ranch has.  It’s a nuance I hope I have communicated sufficiently.

The number of available resale homes in April was 65, up 1.6% from last April.  While the market is still strong for seller’s, we are starting to see the inventory increase in certain price ranges.  As I write this on May 6th, we have 89 homes available in Steiner Ranch.  You heard real estate agents like me begging for inventory just a few months ago.  Well, we’ve now got the inventory.  In fact, in some price segments, we have too much.  I believe we have sufficient inventory for homes up to $500,000.  However, I believe we now have too much inventory in the $500,000 to $700,000 range.  Above $700,000 is a bit light on inventory so it’s still real good for sellers.  So the reason I sounded the alarm a bit earlier when talking about prices is that I am starting to see these market changes.  If the inventory stays high, we are going to start to see the price increases slow down.  I’ll keep monitoring it, but I want to keep you up to date.  If you are thinking of selling, be sure to contact me so we can sit down and discuss this further, especially in your price segment.

Back to the stats.  Across Steiner, the April sales ranged from a low of $305,000 to a high of $1,181,125. This marks the third month in a row in which the lowest sales price was at or above $300,000.  The average sales price to list price ratio was 97.8%.  For homes that closed in April, the average days on market was 30.  As always, my website allows you to look at summary and detailed data for each Steiner Ranch neighborhood.  That detailed information does include address and sales price.

Finally, I want to invite you to my 5th Annual Property Tax Assessment Protest Workshop.  It will be held on Thursday, May 8th at 7:00 at the Towne Square Community Center in Steiner Ranch.  The unfortunate downside of our rising market is, of course, the rising tax assessments.  I can virtually guarantee that your assessment went up this year.  But you need to protest if it goes up too much and is not based on market values.  Come out to learn how to protest your taxes and receive comparable sales that you can use during your protest.
As always, if you have any real estate related questions,  please don’t hesitate to contact me at 512-650-7300, by email, or use the form below. Thanks for reading “How’s The Market In Steiner Ranch.”

Statistics based upon information from ACTRIS for the periods cited.