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The cost of purchasing a house in Bastrop County has declined slightly as prices in the region stabilize, with a new report showing the county still has some of the area’s best bargains.
Meanwhile, nearby Austin and Travis County homes remain out of reach for many first-time homebuyers, industry analysts said. Leasing single-family houses, townhomes and condos, however, is on the rise as an affordable alternative for beginning homebuyers who are deferring purchases in the hope that mortgage interest rates will come down in the future.
In Bastrop County in January, there were 88 home sales, up 3.7% from the same month last year, according to data from Unlock MLS and the Austin Board of Realtors.
January is when the most recent figures are available.
The median sales price of houses dropped 4.4% to $349,950. That makes it much more affordable than the median for the five-county Aust in-Round Rock-San Marcos Metropolitan Statistical area of $409,765, and well below the Travis County market with a median of $475,000.
In Elgin, prices were f lat. In the 79621 ZIP code that includes Elgin, the median price of 38 January house sales dropped a meager $495 to $294,505, compared to the median price of 18 home sales last year.
In the 78634 ZIP code that includes Bastrop, the median sales price of 49 houses sold in January fell 5.2% to $365,000.
There isn’t a lot of new housing on the market in the area, but more houses up for sale increased the number of months of inventory to 5.2 in both Elgin and Bastrop, according to officials.
Lower numbers make it a seller’s market, and higher inventory usually comes at the advantage of the buyer.
However, high interest rates that have remained around 7% over the last few years mean monthly payments are higher than many first-time homebuyers — or those wanting to trade up — can afford.
Meanwhile, sellers are asking for prices similar to the beginning of the decade, when houses were selling for record prices. This is in part because of mortgage rates at 3% or less.
Housing prices in the region peaked in spring 2022 with a median well over $500,000. Even though the costs have come down recently, prices in the Austin-area market increased an average of 40% over the last five years, according to Clare Knapp, housing economist for Unlock MLS.
The good news, she said, is that mortgage rates stabilized to a sustainable rate of 6.08% to 7.2% last year compared to wild upward swings in 2023. There is also a “significant uptick in housing supply,” which is expected to further stabilize price, she said.
Leasing houses is becoming an increasingly popular alternative while interest rates stay high and inventory remains tight.
Austin Board of Realtors and Unlock MLS for the first time began tracking single-family dwelling leases in the area. In 2024, the Austin area had about 30,000 closed home sales and 26,000 closed leases, Knapp said.
The statistics do not include apartment leases.
In Bastrop County, the median monthly lease on houses in January was up 2.9% to 1,950. The number of closed leases was up 40.9% to 30 and there were 69 active leases on the market by the end of the month.
For the region, there were 1,871 closed leases, up 11.7% from last January, and the number of active lease listings on the market was up 8% to 4,246.
The median price to lease a house or condo was down 1.3% to $2,195 a month. That’s about the same as a payment on purchasing a $330,000 house at 7% interest on a 30-year loan, not including escrow payment for property taxes that would add hundreds of dollars to the monthly payment.
The problem, Knapp said, is that not enough new houses priced at under $400,000 are being built where demand is highest.
While Knapp forecasts housing prices to remain stable with a rise of no more than 5% in 2025, there is a wild card in the form of tariffs imposed by the latest Trump administration on goods imported to the United States.
There is a pause for negotiations on a 25% tariff on Canadian goods, but if reinstated it could have a major impact on the price of things like lumber and steel, according to Knapp.
What’s more, fuel prices and building materials made from petroleum could also rise, as 60% of the U.S.’s oil imports are from Canada — seeing how tariffs on goods and commodities from other countries are paid by the U.S. importer and passed on to the customer.
