Austin Real Estate (Unnamed Copywriting) 10 of 10

As the rest of the nation’s real estate market plummets, Austin’s continues to dig itself out of the hole caused by the mortgage crisis. There are a lot of reasons that can be attributed to this increase, not least of which is the strength of the overall Austin economy.

While the rest of the nation has an unemployment rate of almost 10 percent, the rate of unemployment in Austin is just over 8 percent. 2 percent doesn’t sound like a large number, but when you consider how many millions of people that 2 percent represents, you will realize that it is a huge difference after all.

Unemployment isn’t the only area that we are beating the national average, though. In terms of median income, the overall national level is 44,389 dollars, down over 4,000 dollars from the year before. In Austin, our median household income is over 22 percent higher at 56,746 dollars a year. These two numbers go a long way toward describing not only why we have weathered the real estate storm, but also toward describing why Austin is such a desirable town to live in.

As the rest of the nation’s real estate markets continue to fall, the overall median value of homes is continuing to fall as well. The average home price has fallen over 20 percent in the last three years, but in Austin, we never lost more than 12 percent on the whole.

But, more important than our smaller loss of overall value is the rate at which we’ve started to recover. In the last twelve months, housing prices have continued to fall nationwide, and the overall number of homes sold on a monthly basis has fallen as well. But, in Austin, our median housing price has risen over 7 percent, our average home price has risen over 5 percent, and the number of homes sold last month in Austin was up almost 2 percent from the same month last year.

The government tax credit for new home buyers has had a positive effect across the nation as well. The difference, however, is that elsewhere the effect has simply been to slow the fall. In Austin, the effect has been that new home purchases are on the rise, and look as though they are going to continue this trend.

By all accounts, we are definitely better off than we were this time last year. It’s hard to come right out and say that the recession is over in Austin, as it surely isn’t. Home prices are still down from what they were in 2006. Home sales are still down from what they were in the same month of 2006. New construction is still down from where it was in 2006. Average household income is still down from where it was in 2006. Unemployment is still up from where it was in 2006. But, compared with the rest of the nation, and most importantly, compared to where we were this time last year, things are definitely looking up.