Texas Growth: Malignant or Benign?

"Will I ever be able to afford a house in Austin?"

By Stephanie Kelley

Problems continue to challenge young home buyers in the Austin. As if it wasn’t hard enough to establish long-term assets like a first home, a recent article on statesman.com sheds light on the decrease in home sales in comparison to this point last year. The article, written by Statesman staff writer M.B. Taboada, shows how raising credit standards for mortgages might be one contributing factor to why home sales are down 10% from last year.

Taboada shows the most compelling stat, stating “the slowdown in sales was steepest for homes priced below $200,000, which makes up more than half of the Central Texas market.” As a college student or recent graduate, a first home usually falls into this category, and combined with the growing difficulty for younger people to get mortgages, we are left with more and more houses sitting on the market. Even though there are more houses on the market, the price is not going down. Due to steady population increases in Central Texas, these homes will remain solid in their value, regardless of the current declining trend.

Some real estate investors don’t view the situation as being quite as grim. After all, they more than likely have the opportunity to sell homes in various markets, worth, etc. But is the market forgetting the little people? Compared to other big cities like San Antonio and the DFW, where they saw declines of 13% and 7% respectively, Austin’s decline seems almost minuscule.

I feel concerned about this topic for a couple of reasons. With the median price for a house being over $192,000, I begin to wonder how and if I am ever going to be able to afford my first home. As long as more and more people move into the area making more money than I do, the price of homes does not look like it’s going to decrease anytime soon. And combined with the “tighter credit standards”, another way of saying the market is catering towards the wealthy, young home buyers and future home buyers like myself are left feeling overwhelmed.

Article: Austin housing market slowing

Sales in August were down 10 percent from previous year, but prices still rising