AUSTIN, Texas — The housing market is starting to stabilize in Central Texas, according to the Austin Board of Realtors.
Homes are now staying on the market longer – 47 days, up 26 days from October 2021 – and inventory is going up. The median price of a home in the Austin-Round Rock metro area in October was $474,000, an increase of nearly 5% year-over-year but a smaller increase than previous months.
"It's a cooling off of the market and stabilizing of the market, which is probably a good thing," said Dr. Ray Perryman, CEO of The Perryman Group, an economic consulting firm.
Perryman has expertise in real estate and economics. He said while what we're seeing are good signs about the housing market, interest rates continue to rise.
"We have been seeing interest rates getting above 6% on mortgages," Perryman said. "If you go back a year or so, there were less than 3%. They have been pretty steadily going up."
Perryman said that can add several hundred dollars to mortgages rates.
As for whether a person should buy a home now or wait, he said it depends.
"It’s an individual situation. If you have enough cash, you can make a significant down payment, you can buy more house for the money right now. If you are on the edge and seeing how much house you can with a payment for kind of minimum down payment, you are probably better off to wait for a while," Perryman said. "But it always depends on the situation of the buyer.”
Perryman expects that within the next year, interest rates could drop by a point or two. As for home prices, he said they won't jump as high as they have been, but they will continue to rise.
Boomtown is KVUE's series covering the explosive growth in Central Texas. For more Boomtown stories, head to KVUE.com/Boomtown.