Austin housing bubble (tax rates, price, budget)

[whereiend]

Originally Posted by riaelise

Overvalued? I'm not sure about it being overvalued if people were willing to pay the prices. The market is in sync with the buyer pool.

Said buyer pool has now shrunk and we're seeing more normal patterns before the 2020-2022 surge.

Should people feel that their purchases during that time are bad investments? No. For most, homes are places to live and enjoy, foremost.

Yep I'm still seeing small houses near me sell for >$1M. (And this is looking at sale prices in MLS, not list price). If prices have fallen, it's only because the peak was absurd. A free fall has not certainly not happened yet.

[Trainwreck20]

Just sold my mom's house in Fredericksburg for ~10% over appraisal. One offer (98% asking) first day on market and three offers on third day on market (all 100% of asking). Took the best finance option (i.e. least likely to fall through); none were full cash offers. We probably could have listed an additional 10% higher and sold for maybe a bit more, but would likely have taken somewhat longer, but who knows? Just trying to close out estate, so not trying to be greedy.

Anyway, seems that the market is much more balanced than it was a few months ago - sales price was completely in line with recent sales, but no bidding up the price or anything.

[ipott]

One more about the Austin market for next year - https://austin.culturemap.com/news/r...estate-report/

[riaelise]

Yesterday, I was just messing around and Opendoor had offered a full 200k less for our house citing "market conditions".

I believe I could fetch higher on the open market, but it supports what you see anecdotally and read.

[ipott]

Originally Posted by riaelise

Yesterday, I was just messing around and Opendoor had offered a full 200k less for our house citing "market conditions".

I believe I could fetch higher on the open market, but it supports what you see anecdotally and read.

Oh wow! I wonder why they're advertising - why would a seller on the fence take up such an offer?

[cheeva]

"Knock predicts the median home price in the Austin area will reach $594,893 in July 2023. That would represent a 15.5 percent jump from the $515,000 figure reported by the Austin Board of Realtors for this July."

In a buyers’ market, sellers typically accept a lower price than they listed their houses for. The opposite is true in a sellers’ market, where homes often sell for more than the list price. The Austin area is projected to have the lowest sale-to-list-price ratio in July 2023.



Conclusion:

Austin homeowners will be listing their houses next summer for 20%-30% more next summer resulting in only a 15.4% increase in sales price.

[riaelise]

Hey you can ask for whatever you like. At the end of the day it comes down to what the buyer is willing to (or can) pay.

At one point people were trotting out dumps with foundation problems and asking for 700k. That isn’t gonna fly for most areas.

[blameyourself]

Originally Posted by cheeva

"Knock predicts the median home price in the Austin area will reach $594,893 in July 2023. That would represent a 15.5 percent jump from the $515,000 figure reported by the Austin Board of Realtors for this July."

In a buyers’ market, sellers typically accept a lower price than they listed their houses for. The opposite is true in a sellers’ market, where homes often sell for more than the list price. The Austin area is projected to have the lowest sale-to-list-price ratio in July 2023.



Conclusion:

Austin homeowners will be listing their houses next summer for 20%-30% more next summer resulting in only a 15.4% increase in sales price.

Yep, many look at articles like the one quoted and run with the headline instead of focusing on what's actually said. The median price is still going up or leveling off. But nowhere does it say the price is going down. Just because there's a decrease on a listing price doesn't mean median home prices are going down or that things are more affordable. Yet people keep listing articles like these as though this is some great news. I think it's downright comical to call a market a buyers market when prices are pretty much still double from 3 years ago.

[riaelise]

It's not a buyer's market...but it isn't really a seller's market either.
Many people are having a tougher time selling right now.
Sure, the prices are higher, but with each passing month, there are more price drops.
Not great news because the damage to affordability was already done starting in 2020, but who knows.

The real winners in all of this are the people who sold during the peak and didn't have to buy. And the municipal governments of course...because the valuation shot up and we all know it isn't gonna go down in proportion to the market. So we'll be paying taxes on a million dollar home next year even though we can't fetch that on the market.

[LocalPlanner]

Originally Posted by riaelise

It's not a buyer's market...but it isn't really a seller's market either.
Many people are having a tougher time selling right now.
Sure, the prices are higher, but with each passing month, there are more price drops.
Not great news because the damage to affordability was already done starting in 2020, but who knows.

The real winners in all of this are the people who sold during the peak and didn't have to buy. And the municipal governments of course...because the valuation shot up and we all know it isn't gonna go down in proportion to the market. So we'll be paying taxes on a million dollar home next year even though we can't fetch that on the market.

If you can show via sales data that the home can't fetch $1 million on Jan. 1 2023, then use that to protest when your preliminary value comes out in spring (assuming it doesn't reflect the market conditions).

Otherwise, we as taxpayers have to communicate to the elected officials at the taxing jurisdictions that the tax rate can be lowered given the increases in tax base.