Bryan-College Station housing market to remain consistent in 2023

COLLEGE STATION, Texas (KBTX) -If you’re looking for a home, you’ve probably weighed your options on if it’s a good time to step into the market.

Experts say home prices have gone up on a year-over-year basis, but with that, comes some underlying dynamics.

The housing market thrived unexpectedly during the pandemic, with interest rates hitting as low as 2.65% in January of 2021, which left the purchasing power in the buyers’ hands. Fast forward to 2023, interest rates in Bryan-College Station are at just over 6%. Experts say this is mostly due to the Federal Reserve trying to stabilize inflation.

Cherry Ruffino, Real Estate Team Lead at Coldwell Banker Apex, Realtors, told KBTX she’s seen it all when it comes to the ups and downs of the housing market.

”The last two or three years, nothing was normal about that,” said Ruffino. “I’ve never seen it like that in my over 40 years. You know, to get 30 plus offers on a property and then people will pay 10, 20, 30 thousand dollars more.”

Currently, Ruffino said both buyers and sellers are adjusting to a new normal within the market.

“The average time on the market before all of this happened was 90-120 days,” said Ruffino. “Now, its 40-60 days. The regular sales price is between 275, 290 to 300 [thousand]. So, you’re gonna have competition there, but you aren’t competing with 30 offers right now. The most I’ve seen lately is three to five [offers on one home]. "

A report from the Texas Real Estate Research Center shows the median price for a home in Bryan-College Station is $299,950, as of February of this year.

Experts like Adam Perdue, an economist at the Real Estate Research Center at Texas A&M University, added that growth rates of prices and the number of transactions will likely be lower this year.

“By the end of the year, interest rates may be down some. That’s what people are struggling with. It’s a lot less competitive than say two years ago. Looking at the bigger picture though, Bryan-College Station has been a little bit more stable than a lot of other places in Texas, especially Austin. Right now, we’re still reporting unusually high price growth,” Perdue said.

To elaborate on prices and the history the housing market brings, Perdue said they were still increasing unusually rapidly in the first half of last year.

“In many other places across Texas, and the country, they also dropped rapidly in the second half of the year. This also occurred here in Bryan and BCS just not to such extremes, especially on the downside in the second half of the year,” said Perdue.

He predicts market conditions to remain steady as 2023 continues.

”It really is basic supply and demand like any other market. It’s really no one’s market. If you want to put it in a sellers vs. buyers market terms, it’s neither,” said Perdue. “It’s getting harder and harder for buyers to afford the housing prices that we’ve seen so they’re not any better either.”

Ruffino told KBTX there is no better time to buy a home than right now, due to the uncertainty of availability of homes and interest rate hikes in the future.

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