• Interest rates for owner occupied homes jumped to the mid-7% range this week. This is all dependent on the deal and your credit profile, but there was definitely a decent jump in rates this week.
• Inventory continued to inch up to 3.2 months vs. 3.1 months inventory last month.
• Median home price is down 2.3% YOY while the average home price is actually up 0.6%
• Compared to July 2019, before the pandemic, sales were down 15.3 percent, and compared to July 2018, five years back, they were down 5.8 percent.
• Days on Market (DOM) for single-family homes rose from 27 to 42 days.

• My personal deal volume is down about 35% YOY. But it's skewed such that I've done a LOT more leases this year than sales. I'll talk about three notable transactions from July. I know I've mentioned my deal board before, and while its still tilted dramatically toward future buyers, this last month its shifted a bit back to having some "seller" weight to it. If you are looking to sell, I would not doddle around.
• I helped a very nice couple close on a great home with a sweet back yard and pool setup in west Houston. The lesson on this deal was that you need a good Aggie team (including your lender) fighting for you, and sometimes its best to cut the other agent out of the loop and for your client to go speak with the other party directly. We had been looking for over a year so it felt good to help them find a great "forever" home like this.
• We closed a beachfront property in Crystal Beach that was a really fun deal. The lesson here was that sometimes, it's time to offer WAY under asking price just because you can. And sometimes you just might get it.
• Finally, I closed a great deal in Lake Jackson with an Aggie investor. That will be a fun house to make a home! Even in this market, you can find good ones, and in this case, it was one that someone else passed up after getting it under contract. Just because you pay all cash, does not mean that you are entitled to a $50,000 price chip in the option period for no reason. Also on the note of Lake Jackson, did y'all know this was here? Anyone know the name of the restaurant where this is located without looking it up?

• A tale of two "markets" - average Days on Market for CS is 69 days vs 90 days for Bryan.
• The numbers compared to last year are almost the same for College Station, but are up 27 days from last year in Bryan.
• Inventory gap between the two cities is almost 1 month, as there is 2.0 months of supply for CS and 2.7 months for Bryan. Where as this time last year, the inventory supply was 1.7 vs 1.8 months respectively between the two.
• Home Prices across the Brazos Valley are up ~7% since last year.

• Deals still need some finesse and patience to get done. You need to really be flexible & patient with working the seller or buyer. Deals these days are never going to go either party's way.
  
• One of my deal's had the seller demand we close 2 weeks early (they were corporately relocating). So I worked with the Aggie lender and we came back a day later to the seller saying "cant do two weeks but we can close 1 week early", but the seller had already made other plans and said "no thanks". We were puzzled about why even make the demand/request in the first place?
  
• The $750K price range seems to be dividing upper line - where buyers are still committing to deals under that price but struggle as we close or above. Example is one house listed at $775K go under contract in 36 hours (before my clients could get to town that weekend to see it). But others around the $800K have sat at or longer then average Days on Market
  
• Homes from the $250-$500K range are still pretty competitive **if they are priced right**. New builds in that range also seem to have decent demand as well. Some builders might be offering interest rate buy-downs to help the affordability.

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• Demand for Houston rental homes soared in July, reflecting a continued quest for alternate housing amid lingering concerns about affordability and interest rates.
• July single-family home rentals jumped 19.0% year-over-year, with the average lease price up 3.0% to $2,363, a record high.
• A total of 4,211 leases were signed compared to 3,631 in June 2022. That is the highest volume of single-family leasing ever recorded.
• New listings of single-family rentals rose 11.6%.

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