Austin Luxury Real Estate Market Condition

Many people don't think of Austin when they think of luxury real estate. But there is a quite a bit of Austin luxury estate to look at. Right now, there are 524 homes in the Austin MLS listed for $1 million or over. Out of these, 151 show year built of 2007 or later. That is 29% of the market. Add 195 homes built between 2000 and 2006, which makes them relatively new. That is 37% of the million dollar listings on the market. So what we have is a glut of newer luxury homes in Austin.

Million dollar listings by area (you might want to see an Austin MLS map for this): Lake South (LS) and Lake West (LW) have the most at 151. So LS and LW have 29% of the million and over market. That is an area glut. Of those, 53, or 35%, are new as of 2007. 8E and 8W, which cover a similar demographic area, have a combined total of 109, or 21% of the million and up market. River North (RN) has 56, which is 11%.

If you look at the MLS map you will see that these areas with the highest number of million dollar and up listings are in the hills and along the lakes. That makes sense as these are the thought to be the most attractive parts of the Austin area.

The good news is that so far in 2007, there have been 243 million dollar homes sold. There are an additional 59 under contingency contracts of pending a sale. That tells us that almost 60% of these homes look like they will be sold so far this year. The bad news is LS and LW, where out of the 151 listings, there have been only 40 homes sold. Add contingencies and pending sales and you see that about 36% of these homes being sold this year.

The really interesting thing (to me) to look at is homes listed for $3 million and up. There are currently 63 in the MLS. Of these, 20 have been sold or are under contract. Of the active listings, 20 are new as of 2007. Can we sustain this high end market? Time will tell.

Oh, just in case you were wondering, the highest price home is - well, there are 2 - and they are each listed for a cool $13.5 million.