And again….the Austin real estate market is down from 2007’s record year, but still fairing well.  Active listings are up 20%, and # of homes sold are down 20%.  However, we’re still appreciating.  The median sales price is up to $196,120 from last year’s $184,050.  The average sales price is up 5%, $263k from $250k.  The good news is that the glut of inventory looks like it’s being absorbed.  Last month’s numbers indicated 5.03 months of inventory on the market, and this month’s indicate 4.91.

The market is still holding strong.  The median sales price is slightly up, and the average sales price is slightly down.  The # of homes sold is down roughly 14% from April 2007.  Again, we’re not setting records this year, but the market is doing fine.  In my opinion, the average sales price dip is due to the difficult jumbo market, and the glut of luxury homes (14 month+ inventory) currently on the market.  Definitely a good time to get a steal on a luxury property.

First, we have the wonderfully ridiculous Point of Sale Energy Efficiency Requirement proposal, and now we have new Mandatory Visitability proposal.  Perhaps the city of Austin would like a new nickname - “Daddy State?”

The city has always required that homes built using public funds adhere to these guidelines, but the city council passed a resolution to initiate code amendments to all new homes.  The proposed amendments include ground floor or ramp entry, doors at least 32 inches wide, hallways at least 36 inches wide, and first floor bathrooms w/ walls capable of supporting grab rails.

I have real issues w/ the city’s over the top attitude regarding building code & retroactive code.  Extending the visitability standards to all new homes is fixing a problem that doesn’t exist.  As it stands, it’s fairly easy to retroactively modify current homes for the disabled.  Requiring that all homes meet these requirements will become overly costly in comparison with the relatively few modifications to existing homes for the disabled.

Median sales price is up 5% and sales volume is down 21% for March 2007 & 2008. Average days on market is 73 days. Dollar volume sold is down 23%. All in all, not great, but not bad. 2007 was a record year (behind only 2006) so this is indicating a calming market.

I typed this to an investor client today, and thought it would be good to go ahead & post it here as a “quick & dirty market update.”

The market here has somewhat stagnated. Properties are still moving, but they’re taking longer than previously. Prices aren’t going down, but we’re not seeing the rapid appreciation we saw last year. This spring will be telling to see what kind of appreciation we’ll see until 2009. The California market has affected us because not as many Californians can sell their homes, so we’ve seen a slight decrease in migration. The mortgage market has had the biggest effect on our market - it took ~25% of the buyers out of the market. Everything I’ve read indicates that the mortgage market will have worked itself out by the first of 2009, so I expect our market to be gunning full bore ahead at that time.

I honestly believe that this is the best time to buy real estate in Austin for the foreseeable future. We’re able to come in ~5-10% below asking and be taken seriously. I’m seeing my clients successfully negotiate the prices to ~95% of asking price.

***Edit - you can fill out the survey directly to First Am by clicking the “MLXChange Survey” link above***

The Austin Board of Realtors recently changed our MLS service provider from TEMPO to MLXChange. TEMPO was definitely flawed, but it was functional (and we all learned to work with it.) Switching systems would have been the perfect opportunity to address the problems, and improve upon TEMPO. Obvious problems like lack of Mac compatibility, lack of Firefox compatibility, load times, etc…

When we switched to MLXChange, none of these problems were addressed. However, this isn’t my soapbox to gripe about the old problems that weren’t addressed. I would, however, like to address the shortcomings of MLXChange - the functionality that TEMPO had, that was lost in the new system.

I’m going to start a list, and please feel free to comment on a solution, or any other problems that you see. Again, please address functionality that we had with TEMPO, that we now do not have with MLXChange. I will continue to edit this post to include relevant solutions/problems.

1. Clients can not bookmark their Client Gateway link. (No solution - confirmed with MLXChange help desk.)
2. Can not create searches using latitude & longitude parameters (drawing a map box) and save them for later use, or for a client’s Gateway.
3. We are unable to send a client a link to their Client Gateway without sending “Agent Recommendations.” This is confusing to the client, if we merely want to send them a link to the Gateway.
4. Inability to open the map search in a new window.
5. Tempo had the ability to open multiple listings in the same window, and you could just scroll. Now, if you want to view multiple listings, you have to keep hitting the “next” button, which is much slower.
6. The load time of MLXChange is much slower than Tempo.
7. MLXChange freezes often.
8. You can’t open a listing in a new window. With Tempo, you could open a listing in a new window & drag it to a second screen, so you could run comps, enter listings, etc without printing the sheet off. With MLXChange, we’re killing more trees!
9. MLXChange has broken many of the features provided by 3rd party service providers (such as virtual tours.)
10. You can’t refine a search using the map feature. Example: With Tempo, you could run a search, pop the map, and use the polygon, circle, or square tool to refine the search further by area.

The Austin city council voted to lease space to Viva Aerobus to build 3 temporary terminals at Austin Bergstrom. This will mean some super-cheap flights to Mexico, which will be really killer. If you check out the flights from Monterey to Cancun on their website, they’re currently offering round trip tickets for ~$100US. Even if the flights are twice that from Austin to Cancun, it will make Cancun, Cozumel, Playa, Tulum, & more very viable weekend getaways. I’m looking forward to some really cool last minute trips!