East Wilco seeing more houses available
High interest rates stifled residential house sales in Williamson County in the last couple of years, but recent, slight decreases in mortgage rates along with sellers setting more realistic asking prices has led to an active season for neighborhood properties.
While prices across the region have stabilized and even declined slightly in some counties, high prices in Austin and the creation of thousands of new jobs in Williamson County are keeping sales hopping from Georgetown to Taylor.
The median price of houses sold in Austin in September was $550,000 and the median cost of leasing a house was $2,495, according to the latest figures.
Williamson County median prices presented a more affordable alternative to the urban core with September sales of $406,722, down 2.8% from the same month last year, according to data from Unlock MLS and the Austin Board of Realtors.
There were 808 sales completed in September in the county, an increase of 5.8%. Most of those, however, were concentrated in the more populous areas such as Round Rock and Georgetown.
East Williamson County house sales for the month totaled 83 sales in Hutto and Taylor combined. The median sales price was $285,000 in Taylor and $334,320 in Hutto.
The median sales price for the entire five-county Austin-Round-Rock-San Marcos Metropolitan Statistical Area dipped just 1.8% to $420,000.
There are numerous housing projects in the works in East Wilco and new houses from homebuilders combined with job growth are expected to cause an explosion of home sales in the next few years.
SAMSUNG EFFECT
Analysts indicate the promise of jobs and more opportunity anchored by Samsung Austin Semiconductor in Taylor are helping spur growth.
“Samsung Taylor’s a big deal up in Williamson County. So that semiconductor hub is going to change the face of Williamson County,” said Unlock MLS research advisor Vaike O’Grady at a recent Central Texas housing summit.
The $17 billion Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. foundry opening next year in Taylor is creating more than 2,000 permanent jobs and planned future expansions could add thousands more over the next two decades.
In addition, more than 145 South Korea-based suppliers to Samsung’s advanced semiconductor manufacturing facility have already been setting up shop in the area or are hunting for sites near the Taylor plant.
That represents potentially thousands more occupations.
NEWJOBS
Economic development efforts are bringing about 3,200 new jobs to Williamson County, making it among the top 10 in growth across 3,000 U.S. counties, said Dave Porter, executive director of the Williamson County Economic Development Partnership.
Williamson County also has experienced a 7.4% growth in wages.
New jobs, better pay and recent mortgage-rate reductions have created stability in the residential real estate Inventory on the market is a good indication of how homebuying is going.
market that isn’t unduly penurious or advantageous to the buyer or the seller.
HOUSING SUPPLY
Four months or less of inventory favors the seller as it did during a buying frenzy that drove prices to new highs during the first two years of the COVID-19 pandemic.
With six months or more of inventory, the buyer is in the driver’s seat, industry experts said.
Williamson County inventory in September 2024 rose 1.3 months to 5.5 months this September.
Mortgage interest rates double what they were in the early 2020s slowed the market considerably because buyers were unable to afford as much house because of higher monthly payments. Recent dips in mortgage rates have caused the market to come unstuck from a holding pattern.
“We’re finally seeing what happens when mortgage rates shift as buyers who’ve been sitting on the sidelines start making moves. It doesn’t take a massive drop, just enough of a dip to give folks some breathing room, and that’s exactly what’s happening now,” said Kendall Garrison, CEO of Amplify Credit Union.
While more interest-rate cuts are expected before the end of the year, they take some time to have an impact on mortgage rates, which have recently come down from a national average of nearly 7% in June to 6.36% in mid-October, according to BankRate.com.
“What we’re seeing is a market that’s starting to normalize. Sellers aren’t under pressure to cut prices, and buyers aren’t chasing homes out of panic,” Garrison said. “Instead, transactions are happening at a pace that reflects real demand, which is what a healthy market looks like.”
Williamson County is benefitting not just from new jobs coming but from workers willing to commute to the employment hub of Austin, said Brandy Wuensch, president of the Austin Board of Realtors and owner of City View Realty.
The more affordable prices in places like Williamson, Bastrop, Hays and Caldwell counties come down to the affordability of the land the houses are built on, she said. Lots in Austin and Travis County come at a premium, while raw land prices in agricultural areas like East Wilco are bargain-priced compared to any open tracts inside the Austin city limits.
FLEX LISTINGS
Sellers also have benefited from a new program called Flex Listings which gives the homeowner more control over how their property is marketed. It can be listed with limited data or even withheld from posting on public websites such as Realtor.com or Zillow.
This gives the seller less exposure while allowing them to gauge the market without giving up privacy. Under this form of listing, real estate agents can market the property within their own network even while the property is being staged for sale. It can be converted to an active listing for a broader spectrum of people to see when the seller thinks the time is right.
Austin-based Unlock MLS is among the first in the country to introduce this category, which is available in a 15-county region, including Williamson.
The process is more than just a “coming soon” sign in the yard, which doesn’t allow a real estate professional to show the house, but exposes it to a limited market while the house is undergoing a makeover or if the seller is testing the price of what the market will bear, said Emily Girard, CEO of Unlock MLS and ABoR.
“A good number of listings that start in Flex then flip to the regular market, which is how it should work,” Girard said. “Agents are still figuring out when to introduce that option,” she said of the program that debuted in July.
Now is a good time for buyers to look for deals during this transition as Williamson County’s economy grows while interest rates trend down.
“You want to find the perfect house for you that you can afford,” Wuensch said.
When the market was overheated in 2020 and 2021, buyers were settling for whatever they could get and offering sometimes outrageous incentives to be the winning bidder.
Although those days haven’t returned, “you still want to get ahead of the competition,” she added.
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