Texas home sales and median prices hit record highs for the seventh year in a row in 2021, according to the 2021 Texas Real Estate Year in Review from Texas Realtors. Close to 417,000 homes were sold last year, with the median home price being $300,000.
The home sales represent a 6.2% increase from 2020, while prices jumped 15.7%.
“2021 was an exciting year for Texas real estate,” said Texas Realtors chairman Russell Berry. “Demand for housing hit an all-time high, and we saw many multiple-offer situations, including homes that attracted dozens of offers and sold for well above asking price.”
Almost a third of all homes in Texas cost between $200,000-299,999, the report shows.
The Austin-Round Rock metro area was the most expensive in 2021, with a median home price of $450,000, up almost 31% from 2020. Wichita Falls was the cheapest area to live in 2021 with a median home price of $163,850.
The median price per square foot in 2021 was $150, an increase of almost 17% since 2020 and more than a third since 2017. Homes sold for 99.9% of the asking price on average.
The housing inventory at the end of 2021 dropped 0.4 months from the end of 2020 for a total of 1.2 months. Housing inventory refers to how long it would take to sell all the current properties for sale at the average sales pace.
A market balance of supply and demand for the housing inventory is between six and 6.5 months, according to the Texas Real Estate Research Center at Texas A&M University.
“Rising mortgage rates will weaken housing demand and subdue some of the housing price pressures in 2022,” said Luis Torres, a research economist with the Texas Real Estate Research Center. “The housing market will remain strong with the major headwind being the low inventory of homes for sale, especially in the lower price ranges.
Torres said improvements in supply chain issues should mitigate some of the prices of land, material and labor, but home construction is expected to lag behind demand.