{"id":400673,"date":"2026-08-07T23:18:15","date_gmt":"2026-08-07T23:18:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/400673\/"},"modified":"2026-08-07T23:18:15","modified_gmt":"2026-08-07T23:18:15","slug":"79-of-homebuyers-in-austin-are-now-selling-at-a-loss","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/400673\/","title":{"rendered":"79% of homebuyers in Austin are now selling at a loss"},"content":{"rendered":"

Homeowners across Austin are learning a brutal lesson about buying at the top of the market.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Ryan McPherson bid $20,000 over asking for a four-bedroom home in East Austin back in 2022, paying $615,000 for a house he\u2019s now bracing to sell for as little as $420,000, a roughly 30% loss.<\/p>\n

\u201cEverybody that I worked with, they kept saying Austin only goes up,\u201d McPherson told Business Insider<\/a> in an interview.\u00a0<\/p>\n

He\u2019s since moved back to Phoenix and is done waiting for a turnaround. \u201cI\u2019m not going to keep trying to wait this out and pray that there\u2019s a turnaround, because it\u2019s not coming right now,\u201d he said. \u201cI\u2019d rather just stop losing sleep over it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Four years after Austin\u2019s pandemic-era homebuying frenzy peaked, the city is grappling with a painful real estate hangover. madison500 \u2013 stock.adobe.com<\/p>\n

Asking prices in the metro have plummeted by nearly 25% since 2022, the steepest decline of any major US city. trongnguyen \u2013 stock.adobe.com<\/p>\n

He\u2019s far from alone. Austin has posted the steepest home price drop<\/a> of any major US metro over the past four years, with asking prices down nearly 25% since the 2022 peak, according to a Realtor.com analysis.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Roughly 79% of homes that sold that year are now worth less<\/a> than their purchase price.<\/p>\n

A striking 79% of homes that sold in 2022 are now worth less than what buyers paid for them, according to Realtor.com data. Allison \u2013 stock.adobe.com<\/p>\n

Remote workers fleeing pricier coastal cities flooded into Austin during the pandemic, drawn by lower taxes and cheap housing. The metro\u2019s population jumped more than 5% between 2020 and 2022, census data shows, making it the fastest growing large city in the country.<\/p>\n

\u201cIronically, affordability was the big draw,\u201d Joel Berner, a senior economist at Realtor.com, told BI.<\/p>\n

Asking prices soared 36% year-over-year by August 2021, and typical homes topped $465,000 by spring 2022, Realtor.com figures show. \u201cPrices were getting totally out of control,\u201d Berner said.<\/p>\n

Builders piled in, growing Austin\u2019s housing supply by more than 20%, or roughly 211,000 units, between 2020 and 2025, per census estimates. Then the Fed started hiking rates that March, and buyers vanished just as new construction flooded the market.<\/p>\n

\u201cEverything was going into multiple offers, and then it really just stopped,\u201d Austin agent Lindsay Neuren said. \u201cThat really spooked the market.\u201d<\/p>\n

Local agents describe a jarring reversal from the \u201cwhatever it takes to win\u201d bidding-war mentality of 2022 to sellers now pricing homes at a loss just to get any offer \u2014 one agent recounted helping sellers in Buda unload their home for $30,000 less than they\u2019d paid. Tricia \u2013 stock.adobe.com<\/p>\n

Gary Froniewski bought a North Austin condo in 2022 and figures it\u2019s lost as much as half its value since.<\/p>\n

\u201cI expect to take a haircut on this, no matter what,\u201d Froniewski told the outlet. \u201cIt\u2019s just a matter of how devastating it ends up being when we\u2019re ready to actually move.\u201d<\/p>\n

Others have already taken the hit. Agent Cynthia Mattiza is representing 2022 buyers now pricing their home at a loss.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re just thankful to receive any offer sometimes,\u201d she said. Fellow agent John Mundell recently helped clients in Buda sell for $30,000 less than they paid.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019re kind of screwed,\u201d Mundell said. \u201cBut they had to move.\u201d<\/p>\n

Because rents have also softened, some owners are testing whether renting out their property might be a better bet than selling at a loss, with agents reporting a growing tactic of listing homes for sale and rent simultaneously. Jason \u2013 stock.adobe.com<\/p>\n

Sellers who once ignored stained carpets and repairs now have to fix things up themselves before listing, Mundell said, and he\u2019s grown pickier about which homes are worth his time.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019d take anything before,\u201d he said. \u201cNow I\u2019m just being a little more selective.\u201d<\/p>\n

Some owners are listing homes for sale and rent at once,<\/a> betting that becoming a landlord beats a loss. McPherson tried it in 2025, renting his home for $2,500 a month against a $4,000 mortgage payment. It bought him time, not a fix.<\/p>\n

\u201cLife taught me an expensive lesson,\u201d he said. \u201cHopefully, I don\u2019t repeat these mistakes.\u201d<\/p>\n

Not everyone is gloomy. Berner, who bought his own Austin home in 2023, just won a 12% cut on his property tax assessment.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf I had a crystal ball and saw that my home would basically not appreciate in the three years that I owned it, and I could have continued renting for about two-thirds of what I pay in my mortgage, I probably would have stayed renting,\u201d he said. \u201cBut I didn\u2019t have that crystal ball.\u201d<\/p>\n

The piece frames this as a reckoning for a market whose supply surged over 20% (roughly 211,000 units) between 2020 and 2025, outpacing population growth. Thomas \u2013 stock.adobe.com<\/p>\n

Pending sales rose 11% year-over-year in June and price cuts are growing rarer, per Realtor.com, and Zonda executive Keith Hughes ranks Austin tops nationally for long-term fundamentals.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe underlying conditions support a comeback,\u201d Hughes said.<\/p>\n

Froniewski isn\u2019t second-guessing his 2022 purchase, even if the timing stings.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m a firm believer that you can\u2019t time the market,\u201d he said. \u201cYou never know when the peak is, and you never know when the bottom is.\u201d<\/p>\n

Still, he admits: \u201cIf I had to sell the house today, I would be in shambles.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Homeowners across Austin are learning a brutal lesson about buying at the top of the market.\u00a0 Ryan McPherson…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":400674,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[1500,132,134,133,40379,918,4562,14069,6709,140599,2447,111,8218,84729,131,27],"class_list":["post-400673","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-austin","tag-affordable-housing","tag-austin","tag-austin-headlines","tag-austin-news","tag-economics","tag-economy","tag-homeowners","tag-interest-rates","tag-markets","tag-pandemics","tag-property","tag-real-estate","tag-rent","tag-rentals","tag-residential-real-estate","tag-texas"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/400673","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=400673"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/400673\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/400674"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=400673"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=400673"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=400673"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}