MARKET & TRENDS
INVESTING IN TEXAS
Top Reasons to Invest in Texas
IT’S DIFFICULT TO CHOOSE JUST ONE PLACE TO INVEST IN TEXAS.
by Shenoah Grove
hich market in Texas is the best one to invest in? The answer is
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all of them. Last year in Texas, single-family housing sales ended 6.1% higher at 416,488 units sold. The average and median prices increased to $372,656 and $300,000, up 18.1% and 15.7% respectively from 2020 according to the Austin Board of Realtors. Texas ended the year at a 1.2-month supply of inventory. As a result, the close price to list price ratio was at 100%, meaning that on average, houses sold at their exact list price (even though many houses sold well above their list price). Based on the building permit data, Texas added only around 10,000 more units in 2021 than in 2020, at approximately 170,000 new building permits. This level of new supply is insufficient in terms of meeting Texas’ buyer requirements. As a result, we will continue to reduce the inventory while increasing the prices, because real estate prices follow the basic laws of supply and demand. Currently, Texas finds itself in a situation where demand has been outpacing supply for many years. Almost all four major metro areas in Texas outperformed their 2020 performance in the areas of year- over-year sales volume and average and medium price. Let’s break down the individu - al markets, and you’ll see why it’s so hard to choose just one place to invest in Texas.
years had followed. For that reason, some may prefer to compare 2021 to 2019 instead. Using that comparison, 2021 sales are up 9% versus 2019. AUSTIN Last year Austin sales volume exceeded 2020 single-family sales volume by 2.5% to 41,316 sales. The average price jumped up 29.3% to $565,740, and the median price jumped 30.8% to $450,000, according to the Austin Board of Realtors. Sur- prisingly, Austin accomplished this with just 0.6 months of inventory. In 2021, Austin experienced a phe- nomenon that is never seen in real estate. Both the closed sales volume and the pending sales exceeded
DALLASAND FORTWORTH The only market that did not out- perform 2020 from a single-family sales volume standpoint was the Dallas and Fort Worth market. But it was only down 1% year-over-year in sales volume at 117,692 units sold, according to the North Texas Real Estate Information System. However, Dallas and Fort Worth average and median prices were up 20% and 18%, with sales prices landing at $410,453 and $335,000, respectively. Sales were down in no small part due to the lack of inventory in that market (and most markets in Texas), but also because 2020 didn’t follow any of the normal sales distribution curves that prior
48 | think realty magazine :: march – april 2022
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