The Houston real estate market remains strong.
Inventory continues to slowly increase, along with days on market.
If this trend continues throughout the fall and winter season we should see slower growth of YOY listing and sale prices.
Here is the Houston Real Estate Market Report: for September 2021 with YOY comparison:
Transcript:
Chris Bounds 0:00
Chris Bounds here with a another real estate market update for Houston for July of 2021. This market updates coming out a little later than normal. Stay tuned to the end, and I’ll share with you why that is. But let’s dive into the numbers. The real estate market is still hot in Houston. Starting off with home sold. We have 10,159, that’s a 6.1% decrease year over year to same story.
Low inventory, when you have less homes on the market to sell, you’ll naturally have fewer homes sell every single month. But there is a little bit of light in this report, and we’ll get to that in a second. Average sale price, cause we have low inventory, there’s less homes to choose from. A lot of buyers want to take advantage of the low interest rates. And just the growing population of Houston, in general has driven the price up quite a bit. So, the average sale price in July was 389,197, that is a 15.3% increase year over year.
Just think about that, if you were trying to buy a home last year, and you decided you wanted to wait, this year, it costs you 15.3% more to buy the same house. Think about that, waiting is not always better. Average days it took to get a home sold in Houston in July was 26 days, that is a decrease from this time last year. And it’s just a ridiculously fast market. Historically, six months, between four and six months. That is a healthy amount of time to sell a house, we’re at 26 days, which is just not the new listing. There’s a little bit of light, we had 14,400 total new listings on the market in July, that’s a 7.8% increase over this time last year.
Now, to keep in perspective, last year, we were kind of coming out of shutdowns and part of country still under shutdowns, Houston and Texas was coming out of that. So, just keeping that in perspective, but we are getting more homes on the market and in a slightly higher rate than homes are being sold. So, that is a positive sign. Average list price 393,482, that’s a 12.8% increase year over year. And if you want to compare that average list price with first average sale price, by percentage on their selling for more than their listing, because you have a 12.8% increase year over year. In listing, we have a 15.3% year over year in sale price. Active listings in July, 15,413, that is a 27.4% decrease year over year.
But it is more than it was last year. So, that trend, we are getting more inventory is slow and slow right now. But it is slowly building back up to hopefully a normal level. Hopefully we’ll see that sometime in 2022, if not 2023. Well actually, I’m gonna get two rentals, rentals, landlords out there. This markets been very, very good to you because not only has your property increased in value tremendously, but rents have gone up to. We have a $2,162 average rent in Houston in July, that’s at 11.4% increase. Obviously, home buyers that decided they can’t buy, they can’t afford to buy, or just now’s not the right time to buy, they’re having to lease or renew their lease. That is and with lower inventory, just like homes on the market to sell, homes on the market to rent, they’re having the same problem that’s driving up rents.
Overall takeaways, if you’re considering selling your home, again, it’s still the best market ever to get your home sold. Especially if you do not necessarily need to buy a home to move into after you sell your house. It’s a tremendous time to get it especially if the home is priced well in good condition, get anything and everything you want out of the home as far as price without a lot of concessions comparatively to other markets.
For buyers, it’s less of a challenge than it was earlier in the year, deep ellum neighborhood and the price point, there are still a lot of multiple offer situations but working with your agent, how to structure those offers to put yourself in the best position to win, working with your lender on knowing your budget and having that pre approval letter and everything just ready to go whenever you’re making that offer and you can make it as strong as possible that meet your demands.
I mean, this market is no excuse to overpay for something, if it’s something that you don’t really want for that price. But, if it is a home that you absolutely love, and you can’t afford it, and you don’t want to miss out, work with your agent on being able to put yourself in the best position to win that home. And also know, for buyers, highest price isn’t always the best. It’s not always the actual contract that ends up getting accepted. There are other things like option period, and repairs that you may renegotiate after inspection and title, title company, there’s a lot of things that can be negotiated to put your offer in a better position, even though you may not be able to go significantly higher like some other buyers might.
So, just work with your agent on that for the investors out there flipping houses, if you’re putting a quality home, well remodeled home on this market, it’s flying off the shelf, you’re getting a lot more for it than you probably thought you would when you originally bought the house, that’s good news. Landlords, especially those that are buying rentals now, and looking to hold those over the next five years, seven years, 10 years or for forever, it’s a good market. And if you’re using the strategy, especially if you can wait a year on the refinance, you might be able to pull these amount of cash out as the higher comps come out and support a higher value.
And depending on what you’re paying for the home, there’s potential you can be little out of pocket or maybe even no out of pocket, as far as what we’re gonna see to come. Who knows, I mean, the inventory is trending up, so our prices, but the competitiveness as more inventory gets online, should subside slowly we’re coming into the fall and in the winter with a naturally just the market cools down a little bit. So, if you do want to buy a home and you just were getting beat out in the multiple offer situations during the summer, maybe hold off and put your offer in, in between Thanksgiving and Christmas, when traditionally the real estate market is slower.
After New Year’s a couple of weeks after New Year’s it starts to pick back up. And especially once you get into spring, then the cycle starts all over again. So, now on why this market update is a little bit late. I actually got COVID and had the whole week planned out. I was going to Dallas gonna go see Tony Robbins with a lot of folks on our real estate team. And I’ve been looking for that for two years because it got canceled last year because the COVID and I’m getting prepared for it. And then all of a sudden, I get COVID.
Well really what happened was I got sick and I wasn’t sure what was going on. I had a high fever. I’m like, it’s probably COVID and ended up taking a home test because I felt fine. It was it was working from home fine, took the home test and nothing, negative. I’m saying, “Okay”, well, that’s weird, maybe let’s just go away. So, more days, didn’t go away, I still kind of feel kind of fine, just mild fever. Then I go in, take a another test with CVS or Walgreens, one of those places came back, negative! And I’m like, “Man, what’s going on?”
And then, all of a sudden, one day like boom! Hit me like a right hook from Mike Tyson, knocked me down off my feet for like four days and had to cancel my trips. Right before that I ended up actually going to another place to get tested for COVID. That one came back positive. It was like the very next day is when I got knocked off my feet, not be down for like four days.
And, but 100% back on roll, excited, that’s why this market updates late but definitely want to keep this going for trends. You can go back and look at these and see how things are comparing month over month, year over year and be able to make strategic decisions and help buyers and sellers and agents and everyone get what you want out of this market. So, thanks again. I’ll have the August-Septembers’ up very soon. See you!