August marked the one year anniversary of Hurricane Harvey’s landfall off the coast of Texas. As some parts of the city continue to recover from the impact of the massive storm, the real estate market overall in Houston has shown resilience over the past year.
The Houston Association of Realtors reports that 8,358 homes were sold in August 2018. This is up 37.2 percent from last year, but the association compared home sales from August 1 to August 24 to compare it to the pre-Harvey rate and showed that home sales were up 7.6 percent. Compared to August 2016, the last full month of data available, home sales are up 4.3 percent.
“We all know how catastrophic Harvey was and how incredibly resilient our community has been, so HAR has taken great care to gauge Houston’s August housing market performance as accurately as possible given the data distortions caused by the disaster,” explained HAR Chair Kenya Burrell-VanWormer. “We will likely see similar distortions in the September numbers, as Harvey’s effects lingered, however current market conditions are healthy, with single-family home sales and rentals up despite constrained inventory.”
The median home price in Houston grew 3 percent to $238,870 and the average price saw slight gains, increasing 1.9 percent to $300,670. Both prices are an August record for Houston home sales. When reviewing pre-Harvey numbers, sales of homes priced $150,000 and higher all saw significant increases compared to last year.
Additionally, townhome and condo sales also saw increases with and without the “Harvey effect.” Full month sales are up 43 percent, but when looking at sales from August 1 to August 24, sales are up 12.3 percent.
Inventory of single-family homes reached 4.1-months, which is slightly below the national supply of 4.3-months. Inventory of townhomes and condos dropped slightly to 4.3-months.
