Texas homes taking longer to sell

The Lone Star State’s blazing housing market cooled dramatically over the past year in the bitter wind of the Federal Reserve’s rate hikes, but some metros caught the chill worse than others.

Austin, long the hottest market in Texas, was especially hard hit. For-sale homes languished on the market nearly 59 percent longer in 2022 than in the year before, According to data from Realtor.com. As a result, inventory has piled up, rising almost 187 percent year-over-year. The median home price dropped by 3.39 percent.

In Dallas, homes stayed on the market for more than 37 percent longer than in 2021, and inventory went up nearly 161 percent. The median home price, however, did tick up by almost 9 percent.

Houston is weathering the storm better than the other major Texas markets. Time on the market went up by only about 11 percent year-over-year, and inventory increased by just under 50 percent.

The inventory increases came despite a sharp slowdown in single-family starts, which were down 34 percent in December 2022 from the end of 2021, according to the Texas A&M Real Estate Research Center.

Overall housing supply has now returned to pre-pandemic levels, the center reported, erasing the market tightness that drove up prices during the Covid-driven boom.