Ones For Real Estate: DFW & Austin Continue To Break Housing Records
FORT WORTH (CBSDFW.COM) — According to real estate data recently put out by REMAX the Dallas-Fort Worth and Austin real estate markets continue to break and set new records.
In both cases the markets are seeing a housing pinch like never before, with a limited supply and increased demand leading the trend.
While DFW is seeing historic market trends, Austin is the only other Texas city feeling the squeeze harder than North Texas.
For starters -- the DFW market average price for a home has surpassed $350,000 for the first time ever. In Austin the average is over $450,000.
Mary Anne McMahon owns a REMAX brokerage in Austin and says while DFW just recently started seeing this frenzied trend, Austin has been dealing with it for a while. "The slogan 'Keep Austin Weird' is really a good slogan right now," she said. "Austin is weirder than I've ever seen in terms of the real estate and growth in the real estate market. We've got very little inventory and lots of demand."
So, back to comparing notes.
DFW's current housing supply is at about one month's worth of listings, it's about half of that in Austin according to McMahon.
Mike Gonzalez, a chief growth officer for REMAX Posh in Austin described the speed at which homes sell saying, "The property will come on the market on a Thursday you'll have a tons of showings Thursday and Friday. By Saturday you start having offers [and] by Sunday we joke if the property is still there and active the agent probably did something wrong."
Offers far above listing are also becoming common place throughout the DFW and Austin market.
Here in DFW we often hear about $50-, $60-, and even $100,000 above listing in some cases.
McMahon says the highest she's heard about in Austin is far greater than that. She said, "I just read about an offer that was $800,000 over list price."
Unlike DFW, Austin real estate experts say they don't have much room to build new construction.
Gonzalez says they have geographical limitations. "We have had some challenges as far as building new construction, but also just the layout," he explained. "If you look at Austin the way it's laid out there is only so many areas that you can grow towards."
Experts in both markets say home sales will stay hot mainly because investors and buyers coming in from out-of-state are fueling the frenzy. Gonzalez says those people are real buyers with real money.
