Steiner Ranch Housing Report - May 2020

The May edition of How's the Market in Steiner Ranch is now available.  In it, I discuss the April sales statistics and review the numbers for the last six-months.  I also briefly discuss how the Coronavirus has effected the April statistics as the shelter-at-home order was in place for the entire month.

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 with 1835 Realty.  Welcome to the May 2020 edition of "How's the Market in Steiner Ranch."  As usual, we’ll talk about the stats but, of course, I will also address the coronavirus impact on real estate.

In April, 24 resale homes closed in Steiner Ranch which was the same as April 2019.  Given the lag time from contract to closing, I can tell you that most of these homes were under contract before the stay-at-home orders were issued.  The median price increased 8.9% to $581,000.  The average price of a home decreased 12.6% to $637,221.  The reason for the big disparity between median and average this month is that a $4.3 million home sold in 2019.  The average price per square foot increased by 6.3% to $187.70.    Of course, I always prefer to look at a longer time period to get a more accurate picture of the market because one month is a small data set.  The number of resale homes sold over the last six months is 100, up 5.3% from the same time period the year prior.  The median price of a resale home has increased 19.0% to $545,000.  The average price increased by 18.7% to $654,175.  The average price per square foot increased 14.3% to $190.79.  These are pretty strong numbers so let’s take a closer look.  Remember last year when every month I told you that the stats showed prices falling even though I said that wasn’t really the case because it was just more lower-end homes selling than the prior year?  Well, guess what?  Now, we are seeing the opposite.  Over the last six months, the number of homes under $500,000 selling is down by about 30% while homes from $500,000 to $1 million are up 54%.  Further, homes over $1 million are up 75%.  So, as we compare to last year’s number, the price gains look very strong.  Don’t get me wrong – prices are moving up, but just not by as much as the statistics indicate.  I mentioned last month that this trend was emerging and I expect it will be with us for at least a couple more months.

The number of available resale homes at the end of April was 41, down 18.0% from last April.  Across Steiner, the April sales ranged from a low of $350,000 to a high of $1,360,000.   The average sales price to list price ratio was 99.8%.  For homes that closed in April, the average days on market was 32, down from 43 last April.

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 big red “Search Sold Data” button towards the bottom of the page.

So how has coronavirus impacted Steiner?  April gives us a really good benchmark because we spent all month under the stay-at-home orders.  Compared to April 2019, the number of new listings in Steiner was down 28% from 50 to 36.  The number of homes that went under contract was down 20% from 30 to 24.  These numbers are actually better than other areas.  For example, across the entire MLS, the number of homes listed was down 21% while contracts were down 20%.  For resale homes only in suburban areas of Austin, the number of homes listed was down 33% while contracts were down 28%.

Now you can see why I was so optimistic last month that real estate was going to whether this well and come out strong on the other side.  As we begin to emerge from the stay-at-home orders, more buyers are out and about.  The biggest negative I currently see is that large corporations are still pretty quiet on their corporate relocations so we don’t have as many professionals moving to Austin right now as we usually see at this time of year.  That will come back, but at this point I’m not sure when we’ll start to see that portion of the recovery.

If you are not yet a member of the Discover Steiner Ranch group on Facebook, I invite you to check it out.  During coronavirus, the group became a place to play a few games like the household scavenger hunt, the counting jar, and Thursday Night Trivia.  It’s a good place to check out positive things that are happening in Steiner.

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.