Luxury home buying and historically low interest rates drove home prices to new highs and kept inventory at record lows in April, according to the Houston Association of Realtors April 2021 home sales report.
April sales continued to trend upwards for the 11th consecutive month. The Houston market saw an increase in single-family home sales, total property sales and total dollar volume sales compared to April 2020, as well as a decrease in the Days on Market (DOM).
New listings, pending listings, closings and showings were also all up compared to the same month last year.
As in March, some numbers in HAR’s April report are skewed compared to last year because the housing market was in the early days of recovery from the pandemic-induced lockdown.
On a year-to-date basis, single-family home sales are running 24.4% ahead of 2020’s pace. Total sales of all property types increased 58.3%, with 11,348 units sold, and total dollar volume increased 85.9% to about $4.0 billion. The DOM for single-family homes in Houston dipped from 58 to 40 days.
Prices continued to rise, as the single-family home average price climbed to a record high, rising 20.0% to $371,854. The single-family home median price rose 17.6% to $295,000 – also a record high.
This can largely be attributed to the sales of high-end homes. Homes priced from the $750,000s and above led the change in sales volume and saw a sales increase of 164.3% year-over-year. Homes priced from $500,000 to $750,000 saw an increase of 132.2%.
Townhome and condominium sales surged by 112.7% and reached record-high prices, with the average price up 8.8% to $246,940 and the median price up 11.0% to $200,000.
New listings shot up, with Realtors entering 12,290 properties into the Multiple Listing Service (MLS) this April compared to 9,695 last April, an increase of 26.8%.
Pending sales rose 72.4% year-over-year in April, with a total of 11,140 single-family home listings going under contract versus 6,463 in April of 2020.
The rise in new listings was not enough to offset the growing demand for new homes and soaring home prices, which pushed inventory to a record low 1.4-months supply (compared to 3.4 months a year earlier). This is unchanged from last month’s level and is significantly lower than the national level of 2.1 months, according to the National Association of Realtors (NAR).
Staying consistent with shrinking inventory amid increasing demand, the number of total active listings (number of available properties) fell 51.1% compared to April 2020, with 12,251 active listings in the MLS in April compared to 25,028 a year earlier.
Despite the continuing lack of inventory, there was a 47.4% increase in home closings during April when compared to last year, with a total of 9,105 single-family home sales versus 6,175 in April of 2020.
The number of showings also soared as a total of 214,564 showings took place this April, a 76.5% jump from the 121,564 showings held in April of 2020.