October ‘24 Market Update

To eliminate seasonality, we compared the 4 major Texas markets (Austin, Dallas, Houston, and San Antonio) housing data on a Year-over-Year “YoY” basis, from October 2024 versus last October 2023. Check out the graphs and detailed information below for further analysis.

Major theme: 30-year mortgage rates impact sales volumes. Looking at September’s rates for each year (to address the closing lag time of 30 days), the rates were down 100 basis points from 7.2% to 6.2%. In turn, this resulted in YoY sales volume increases up to 19.5% from last year.

Relatedly, the YoY sales prices steadied across the board and ranged from 0% to 2%, on a per square foot basis.

Even with YoY increased sales volumes, YoY inventories continue to rise by a range of 13%-36% for these markets. This results in a YoY increase of 1 month in the months of inventory available to 4.5 months this year, as opposed to 3.5 months at the same time last year.

More people are listing their homes to sell and taking longer to sell. Prices have remained stubbornly steady, much to our surprise. With 30-year rates rising in last month, we believe there will be renewed downward pressure on pricing and sales volumes, but time will tell.

Source of data: Texas A&M Real Estate Research Center