Report: homes in Austin are selling for more than asking price than any major US city
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AUSTIN (KXAN) – Austin’s housing market is one of the hottest in the country, and according to a report by online real estate brokerage firm Redfin, homes are selling for the highest price in 47 metropolitan areas analyzed over the past month.
According to the report, homes are selling for 7% more than asking price. An average Austin home listed at $ 400,000 sold for $ 428,000 from February 14 to March 14. A year ago, Austin homes were selling nearly 1% below asking price, according to the report.
This is the largest year-over-year gain across all of the metropolitan areas reviewed by Redfin.
âAlmost every offer that my clients face is competition, and most homes cost over 20% above asking price,â said April Miller, Redfin’s agent in the Austin area.
She said she recently helped a client with an offer for a three-bedroom, two-bathroom home for $ 515,000 and went all out. The offer was $ 100,000 more than asking price, and they waived evaluation and financing contingencies, but still came third out of 38 offers.
âEach potential buyer was bidding more than asking price, and four of the bids were over $ 100,000 or more,â she said.
Miller says she may have lost a deal or two in her entire career. Now she is losing more than ever.
âSeeing on my dashboard that 56 offers had been written and all lost due to multiple offer situations is unheard of in my career,â Miller said.
This includes customer Jennifer Gamon, who was passing through Austin in an RV with her family last fall.
âWe really fell in love,â she said.
She and her husband decided this this is where they wanted to raise their children.
âLiterally everywhere you go, everyone is so nice and wants to help,â she said.
While the decision was swift, the process was not – Gamon presented nearly a dozen different offers. All rejected.
âAt the point of tears,â Gamon said.
The family moved from California.
Redfin said nearly three times as many people outside of Austin were looking to relocate to town than the year before based on the site’s search results, and many of those people have great buying power. .
The average person looking to relocate to Austin has a buying budget of $ 852,500, according to the Redfin report, and that’s 32% more than current Austin residents looking to buy a home.
Gamon’s budget was a little less than that, and she couldn’t outbid the others. She says she was lucky. They found a salesperson who had an urgent deadline.
âEvery day we literally wake up, look out the window and ask, ‘How did that happen? How did we get so lucky? ‘ Said Gamon.
This is the kind of luck Jon Kniss is hoping to catch. He wants to switch from renting to buying a house in his neighborhood and leaves this word on the neighbors’ doorsteps:
âHopefully someone wants to make a quick and easy sale, or you know, the timing they need or whatever conditions they might need, we can meet that,â Kniss said.
He hopes to avoid the competition altogether and move into a house before his daughter returns to school in the fall.
âI have a few friends here and I don’t want to start over and have to make new friends,â Jon’s daughter Alexa said.
Miller isn’t surprised by the tactics. She says they hear about people knocking on doors and offering money to homeowners for a building that isn’t even on the market.
âThis morning, one of the listing agents showed a video of buyers who sent it to the sellers. We see all kinds of things outside the box, âshe said.
Gamon admitted while she was excited to finally close a house, she was a little nervous about the anti-California hostility.
âWe are here to help members of society that we think are already beautiful; we don’t want to change anything, âshe said.
But Gamon says that so far the southern hospitality has lived up to her first meeting with her, and she’s looking forward to growing her business here and hiring locally.
Who is left out?
So who is most burned by this buying frenzy?
Miller says she thinks it’s first-time homebuyers and military veterans.
âI saw a lot of mine, personally, who stepped back and said, ‘We’re going to wait,’ because it’s so hard to compete, ‘she said.
Miller hopes more supplies on the horizon will help them get into homes.
Nationally, Redfin says markets in San Jose, Seattle, San Francisco and Sacramento are all seeing homes doing well above asking prices. San Jose is second behind Austin with a 5.5% premium, followed by Seattle (5.3%), San Francisco (5%) and Sacramento (2.7%) over the same period.
On the flip side, homes in Miami are selling for 4% below asking prices, says Redfin. New Orleans homes are selling 2.5% below demand, followed by Pittsburgh (25), Orlando (1.7%) and Chicago (1.6%).
Outside investors buy a house, which drives up prices
In January, KXAN’s Nabil Remadna reported that although mortgage rates are low, buyers must be prepared to spend a lot of money.
He spoke to Austin realtor Zac Barger, and Barger said the median home price at the time, $ 365,000, increased 19% year-over-year. He described the rise as “astronomical”, especially with extremely low stocks in the market.
Barger said his customers had to bid $ 10,000 to $ 20,000 above the asking price “just to have a chance.”
With the installation of large companies in Austin including Google and Tesla, this will also affect the market. Austin City Council member Greg Casar said he would like to see land use planning rules changed to allow more homes in the city.
“We need to change our land use planning rules, so that there can be more houses inside the city, so that when growth comes in, we don’t evict so many people,” a- he declared. âThe current path has prevented young people from buying a house in Austin. “
Austin-Round Rock home prices jump nearly 24%
According to the Austin Board of Realtors, home prices in the Austin-Round Rock area jumped 23.9% in January. The board said 2,523 homes had been sold in the area, and despite 2,878 new listings in January – an 11% drop from 2020 – active listings fell from 73.9% to just 1 369 properties in the area.
Home inventories fell 1.3 months to an all-time high of 0.4 months in inventory, with homes spending an average of 33 days on the market.
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