Texas Property Insider- Austin Real Estate and Texas Coastal Real Estate Blog

Welcome to Texas Property Insider. The purpose of this blog is to provide accurate and helpful information about market trends and issues important to property owners in Central Texas and on the Texas Coast. You hear a lot of talk out there. You see the statistics, read the stories in the newspaper and you see practitioners regurgitate those same stories and statistics. There is more information available then ever before. But why is it, even after all of the stories and pundits have had their say, you still feel you can’t grasp what’s really happening in the real estate market?


There is a lot more to it than simple statistics and market info. These numbers are helpful and vitally important, but if taken at face value they can be misleading, even deceiving. As Mark Twain once said, “There are lies, damned lies and then there are statistics.” I created this blog to pull back the curtain on Texas real estate, interpret the market information and present it to you in a format that is both pithy and easy to digest.

Friday, February 26, 2010

January home sales show improvement...



The Austin area saw 884 homes sold during January, up 5 percent from January 2009, according to the Multiple Listing Service report by the Austin Board of Realtors. The median price for a home in the Austin area during January remained stable, up 1 percent to $179,250 compared with the same month last year.

“At this point, we can look back and see that January 2009 was the low point of this cycle,” said John Horton, chairman of the Austin Board of Realtors. “With steady improvement throughout 2009 that continued in January 2010, we can see that we’re one year into the recovery in Austin. … That it’s the kind of recovery we want — one that is steady, stable and consistent.”

The volume of single-family home sales in Austin improved steadily throughout 2009. During the first half of the year, the gap in year-over-year sales volume closed consistently, reaching levels similar to 2008 during the summer peak, with the exception of a dip in August, according to ABoR. During the fall 2009, sales volume began outperforming 2008 and surged in October and November, spurred by the original deadline for the first-time homebuyer tax credit. In December 2009, sales volume again achieved a modest increase of 5 percent compared with December 2008.

Horton said the area is already seeing positive signs in sales volume and price appreciation. “Those factors, combined with the population growth and additional jobs economists expect for our area in 2010, bode well for the long-term value of Austin real estate.”

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