Austin, Texas has emerged as one of the most prominent buyer’s markets in the nation. Data suggests that this change is no longer temporary.
Redfin data shows all major Texas cities, including Austin, the Dallas-Fort Worth area, Houston and San Antonio, have seen year-over-year price declines, a correction with little sign of reversing. Despite a strong start to the year, spring failed to provide the seasonal momentum sellers had hoped for.
The reversal is particularly stark in Austin, which spent the pandemic era emblematic of America’s remote-work housing craze. Filled with technology transplants and newly unbound workers, the city saw a surge in demand and record-breaking prices for the better part of three years.
I’m starting to feel a hangover now. Inventory is rising, prices are down significantly from their peaks, and affordability, long a flashpoint for residents who can afford to buy in their city, is finally showing signs of easing.
For Austin real estate agents, the market correction is a reset. It would reward people with sharp skills while locking out part-time workers who rode the pandemic boom without building a real business.
Across the country, markets like Austin, which operated the hottest during the pandemic, are now cooling the fastest, and the days of just putting up a sign and waiting for offers are over.
“Buyers are very sensitive to interest rates.”
Cynthia Matiza, an Austin, Texas-based real estate agent with Kuper Sotheby’s International Realty, said Austin has definitely experienced a cooling market compared to the COVID-19 era.
Cynthia Mathisa
“We went from red-hot to pretty cool pretty quickly,” Matiza told Inman. “In the hyper-local market where I work on Lake Travis in West Austin, it’s been a buyer’s market for a while now. If the price is good they’ll move, but there’s so much inventory for buyers to choose from and they’re definitely picky.”
She said she recently had a listing where the seller was willing to take a contingency offer and accepted a $50,000 contract just to close the deal. The buyer eventually changed his mind, but the seller was willing to trade on those terms.
“High supply certainly affects buyer sentiment,” Matiza said. “We know that supply and demand influence buyer behavior. In the markets I cover, we have about four to six months’ worth of supply, and in some areas it’s more than that. It looks balanced, but it still feels like a buyer’s market.”
She said affordability is one of the main factors dampening buyer demand in Austin. “This is a crisis in our city,” she said. “We’ve had a lot of conversations with city officials about affordability and what we can do. There’s been a lot of new construction over the years, and there’s plenty of supply in the suburban market.”
Rising interest rates, the ongoing war in Iran and broader economic uncertainty are also key factors dampening demand for Austin purchases this year. “We saw a peak in activity in January and early February, but once the Middle East war started, activity started to subside,” Matisa said. “Buyers are very sensitive to interest rates, so whenever interest rates go down, buyer activity increases.”
only the strong survive
Matiza said he represents many sellers in West Austin and each area has enough inventory to compete. She has received low-budget offers from buyers and sellers who cannot make up the price difference.
She points to one offer on a property where the buyer changed his mind during the option period. She said it is normal and does happen, but the number of failed contracts is higher than in 2021-2022.
“With all this change, I feel like it’s certainly harder to close deals,” Matiza said. “There is less urgency with the buyer, so skillful and ongoing communication with the buyer’s agent is required to keep the deal going.”
Matiza’s market may be tough right now, but she’s been an agent in Austin for more than 16 years and has been through tough cycles before. What has changed for her is the resilience she has built to get through difficult times.
“I know it’s not forever, so I just keep trying, keep communicating with our customers about how we’re serving them, and keep them informed of the market to set the right expectations,” she said.
Matiza believes agents that entered the market in 2021 or 2022 are experiencing the biggest hurdles. “They only know when it was easier to reach an agreement,” she says. “This cool market will definitely require more creativity, patience and special skills to manage the emotional highs and lows of customers.”
Texas experienced an influx of new licensees during the boom. Modifications typically eliminate part-time and transactional agents, ultimately benefiting experienced professionals like Matiza who can weather a down market.
The outflow is reflected in data from the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas. As interest rates rose and deals dried up, the pace of upgrades to broker certification, a traditional indicator of career commitment for real estate salespeople, fell from a peak of 800 per quarter in 2022 to less than 400 by early 2025. The 50 percent decline shows that the profession is quietly shedding people who haven’t been in the industry for many years.
Matiza said it’s difficult to remain resilient, but it’s “what we’re doing to survive this down market.”
“Austin is a very strong and influential city with a lot of potential, so I believe we are on the rise,” she said. “All we need to do is work on the fundamentals of serving our clients with utmost professionalism and power through it.”
“They actually have to resell it now.”
Ben Mizes is the president of Clever Real Estate and also works as a real estate agent. He works with agents in Texas and Arizona and evaluates transaction data from thousands of transactions across the country. He provided a free evaluation of Matisa’s experience.
Ben Mize
Mizes said many Sunbelt markets received attention in 2021 and 2022, but buyers waived contingencies and won bidding wars. “They will do this within the first few days of listing. Now, buying is a slower, more deliberate experience,” Mizes told Inman. “Buyers remain aggressive but have become more price sensitive. Sellers are still clinging to the idea that prices will return to 2021 levels.”
As a result, many homes in these markets are now on the market two to three times longer than the 2021 average, Meizes said.
“A few weeks go by, and in many cases, a listing only receives one offer. Gone are the days of multiple offers,” Mizes says.
As Meises noted, sellers in Austin and other pandemic-era hot markets may still have their pandemic-era price expectations baked in. Today, the most difficult part of a listing agent’s job is consulting on pricing and convincing sellers that the market is moving without losing listings to agents who bid high to win their business.
While affordability remains a major challenge, buyers in markets like Austin, Texas, can do things that “were not possible during the boom,” Mizes said.
“They can negotiate lower prices and repairs to the home,” he said. “This was unheard of during the boom.”
This has made agents’ jobs in these markets much different and more difficult than during the pandemic. Selling in a market like Austin requires more tactics and more advanced skills, Mizes said. But this means that top agents are differentiating themselves and proving their worth.
“Before, agents could just post a listing and it would sell automatically,” Mizes said. “They actually have to sell it again now.”
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