July Downtown Condo Sales Show Improvement

We’ve updated the AustinTowers | TOWERS Realty Downtown Austin Condo Market Index for July, 2009 and, for the first time this year, MLS sales were higher than the previous year numbers.

In the month of July, 12 downtown Austin condo units were transacted on the MLS: 2 more than in July of 2009 with a 5% lower price per square foot. In addition, the % of asking price jumped significantly from a June low of 87% returning to a more typical 97%. Average days on market for units that sold came in at 88, a 17% drop over last year. From an inventory perspective, months inventory droped from 33 months to 24 months — a significant drop. This number, however, remains high as buyers seem to prefer units in new projects over MLS inventory.

As always, the results show the weakness of the MLS. While 12 units sold through MLS, additional units went ton sale at the Shore and other new projects outside of the MLS. While the MLS numbers continue to show a surprisingly small transaction volume, it is difficult to know whether sales were weakening or whether the most recent sales were simply closed off MLS.

A final observation is that the units that are moving are priced at less than $350,000. In July, 2 of the 12 units were priced uner $200K, an additional 7 were priced under $300K, and only 3 were priced over $300K with the highest priced unit fetching $350K. So far this year, there has only been one sale on the MLS for more than $1,000,000.

See the full index here.