(Stock)
The housing market in Austin, Texas has become notoriously tight over the past decade.
Now investors are making it even harder to buy a home, Austin NPR station KUT reported. Last year, investors bought about a third of single-family homes sold in the Austin-Round Rock metro area, according to a CoreLogic report.
That’s a big step up from the previous decade, when investors accounted for less than 20% of single-family home buyers in the area. According to CoreLogic’s definition, an investor is either a non-individual who buys a house or someone who buys three or more houses at the same time.
The move makes sense for investors, as the Austin area’s population has been growing at a steady rate – around 3% per year – for the past 10 years, while new construction has been unable to meet the need for rental housing. or for sale – a problem exacerbated by recent supply chain issues. At the same time, rents are rising faster than ever.
The combination of high rents and a limited housing supply is prompting investors to buy, renovate and keep Austin’s rental units rather than flipping them as they did in the past. A recent spike in house prices also makes a good return on investment likely. Austin is also one of the best places for the development of single-family homes for rental rather than purchase.
Institutional investors bought about 10% of Austin homes sold in 2021, according to a report cited in the article. It is not known how many of these houses were condominiums and how many belonged to the category of single-family houses, that is, houses owned in fee simple. This percentage has also increased in recent years. Until recently, institutional investors in single-family homes were most active in Atlanta, Phoenix and Tampa.
[Austin NPR station KUT] –Cindy Widner
