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It’s no secret that Austin’s home sale market has been tough, but new data show it notched the steepest annual drops in price and financing activity among markets with at least 1 million residents.
The takeaway is based on The Real Deal’s analysis of median prices in the Austin-Round Rock market and other data provided by real estate information firm Attom.
The median home sale price in the Texas capital region plummeted by 8.2 percent year-over- year to $416,000. The national median climbed by 4.8 percent to $375,000.
As home prices fell in Austin, so did mortgage activity.
Originations came in at about 7,500 in the third quarter, falling by just under 40 percent compared to the same time a year before. Refinances plunged about 22 percent, and purchase loan originations tumbled by almost 41 percent.
The drop in mortgage activity was the steepest among the country’s top markets, bucking national trends. Purchase mortgage originations dropped nationally in the third quarter as well, but just by 6.6 percent year over year, per Attom. Meanwhile, refinancing deals grew by 12 percent nationally compared to the same quarter last year, likely in light of the Federal Reserve’s recent slashing of interest rates.
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Austin’s mortgage activity peaked in the third quarter of 2020, in the early months of the pandemic home-buying spree, when the region clocked more than 36,000 originations of all stripes. This year’s third quarter activity puts the market at 21 percent of that peak period, at about 7,600.
The latest data show a market that’s nevertheless far from its recent bottom, which came in the first quarter of 2000, when the Austin-RoundRock had about 4,600 loan originations.
Texas experienced a surge in home-buying during the pandemic, with institutional investors in particular snapping up scores of properties. More recently, the region has been in the throes of what many agents consider to be a buyers’ market, along with many other parts of the country, with sellers greenlighting more discounts in order to offload properties.