August 2020 Housing Market Report
Old man giving a thumbs up because he was just approved for a loan

Written by Brian Johnson

Engineer, investor, REALTOR®, and Ten Properties owner, I help new investors use data to build their real estate empire. Connect with me today to start building your ten.

September 17, 2020

We are back! If you’re a buyer sitting on the sidelines worried about the COVID market, today’s data should squash those fears.

Latest numbers are out. Let’s take a deeper look into the data…

Median Sales Price

This number continues to rise post-COVID. The actual value only went up $2k over last month, but the 11% is the better of the two numbers to watch anyway, as it represents Year-Over-Year (YOY) growth. We like this number to remain steady positive, as it indicates a healthy active market. Austin is typically around 6%, so we’re definitely seeing strong price growth.

Active Listings | Pending Sales

What we’re seeing here is the release of the oversupply during the COVID summer. Buyers stepped in and scooped up a lot of homes, which moved the inventory from Active (which are homes not under contract yet) to Pending (homes that are under contract with a buyer).

ADOM | MOI

I like to look at Average Days on Market (ADOM) and Months of Inventory (MOI) to tell the real picture. While a 42 day ADOM is about normal for Austin, the 1.2 month inventory drop is HUGE and even larger than last month’s 1.0 drop. This tells us that inventory is shrinking to record-low levels, which will continue to drive up prices and take us squarely into seller’s territory.

Folks, this is big. Don’t forget that the delta-change values are YOY. That means we are comparing COVID data to pre-COVID (do any of us even remember what that was?) data! Even if the data was FLAT, it would mean we fully recovered to where we were last year. The fact that we’re up 35% in sales volume is simply crazy (very technical term).

If you’re a buyer sitting on the sidelines worried about the COVID market, today’s data should squash those fears. Add to this that Tesla and Apple are still coming and you have a recipe for insane market growth.

And there you have it for this month. Happy hunting!

You May Also Like…