Published January 5, 2024
How Many Austin Homebuyers are Currently Offering Over List Price?
While high interest rates are prompting many sellers to drop prices at a record pace nationally, 13% of homes in the Austin metro are still selling above the listing price.
That's according to a new analysis of data from Redfin Corp., which found 32% of homes nationally sold above listing price in October - up 2.7 percentage points from year ago.
As we've noted, a variety of factors suggest the housing market is shifting to give buyers more leverage in many markets. However, prices remain significantly elevated and, in many metros, are still on the rise - just not at the rapid pace of recent years.
In the Austin metro, homes sold for an average of 97% of the listing price in October.
Housing supply and affordability issues rage on it in the city of Austin, which are pushing residents to the suburbs. The issues have ramped up in recent years as Austin has become the 10th largest city in the country, which has also made it difficult to find pockets of the city where people making less than six figures can afford to buy a home.
Additionally, home are still selling quickly in a number of metro areas.
In October, the median days on the market in Austin was 63, That's up from 73 days a year ago. The national median was 34.
The national housing picture
While nearly one-third of homes sold above the listing price nationally in October, some metros posted significantly higher totals.
That includes Rochester, N.Y.(72%); Hartford, Conn. (70%); and Buffalo, N.Y. (65%); which had the highest percentage of homes that sold above the listing price.
Top 10 Markets for home selling above list price
Here are some the markets where the highest percentage of Homes are selling above listing price and the median days on the market.
Metro | Percentage of homes sold above list price | Median days on the market |
Rochester, N.Y. | 72.24% | 9 |
Hartford, Conn. | 70.04% | 29 |
Buffalo, N.Y. | 65.51% | 12 |
Newark, N.J. | 64.36% | 26 |
San Jose, Calif. | 63.08% | 14 |
Oakland, Calif. | 61.82% | 15 |
Worchester, Mass | 61.23% | 20 |
Bridgeport, Conn | 56.81% | 38 |
Camden, N.J. | 56.48% | 24 |
New Haven, Conn. | 56.24% | 42 |
Housing's 'missing middle'
These trends come as no surprise when coupled with Business Journals' analysis of recent Zillow data showing the number of ZIP codes requiring six-figure income in on the rise.
Sustained sales well above listing prices coupled with high interest rate and ever-increasing salary requirements continue to account for what's now called the "missing-middle". The term is in reference to the dearth of housing that falls between traditional single-family homes and midrise apartment buildings, and includes duplexes and townhouses.
Among major metros, Cape Coral, Fla. (10%), West Palm Beach, Fla. (11%), and New Orleans (11%), had the lowest percentages selling above list price. In general, several of the sunbelt markets that had a significant spikes in pricing during the pandemic are now among the metros with the lowest share of hoes sold above listing price.
Nationally, homes are selling at an average of 99% of listing price.
When we originally named this concept, we were primarily thinking of it as a way to emphasize the growing demand for walkable living (and) living in walkable neighborhoods. And over the last five to seven years, in particular, it's shifted," Parolek said in an interview with the Business Journals' Ashley Fahey last month. "I originally was focused on the higher value real estate markets like the Bay Area or Seattle, but it's now a concept that's being applied and discussed in every corner of the country, including smaller rural communities, because they're having housing-cost issues just as much as the bigger cities and the regions."
But putting Parolek's theories into action has proved difficult in the face of exclusively single-family zoning in communities across the country.
In 2019, The New York Times found in some American cities, more than 75% of residential land is zoned for single-family development only.
Efforts to reform those zoning policies are often sparking intense debates between those who prefer single-family housing and those who want to see more affordable options in their communities.
This article originally appeared in the Austin Business Journal.
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