Last month's report said June 2026 brought the first positive year-over-year median of this cycle. Two more monthly releases from Unlock MLS have landed since then. The first confirmed it. The second reversed it.
Did the Austin median price keep rising after June?
For one month, yes. In July 2026 the median sales price across the Austin-Round Rock-San Marcos metro rose 1.0% year over year to $435,000, on 2,739 closed sales, up 4.4%. Pending sales rose 4.1% and months of inventory fell to 4.7. Vaike O'Grady of Unlock MLS summed up July this way: deals are happening, prices are holding and buyers and sellers are finding opportunities equally.
August did not follow. The metro median fell to $412,000, down 6.4% from August 2025. Closed sales dropped 7.3% to 2,501, and total dollar volume fell 11.1% to about $1.4 billion. Two small gains in a row, then a larger decline, puts the median back on the side of the ledger it spent most of the past three years on.
Why did Austin home prices fall in August 2026?
Unlock MLS pointed to national conditions rather than anything specific to Central Texas. In O'Grady's words, Austin is not immune to what is happening across the rest of the country, and August's data reflects some of the same affordability and interest rate pressures seen nationwide. She added that higher interest rates mean fewer potential buyers, but positive pending sales and continued building activity show the market is still moving.
The decline was broad across the core counties. Travis County's median fell 6.4% to $489,000 on 1,111 sales, down 9.5%. Williamson County's median fell 5.9% to $399,900 on 855 sales, down 4.1%. Hays County's median fell 1.4% to $355,000. Within the city of Austin, the median was $560,000, down 4.3%.
“Closings tell you what happened last month. Pendings tell you what is about to.”
What do pending sales say about the fall?
They are the reason not to call August a new trend yet. Metro pending sales rose 1.5% year over year to 2,623, even as closings fell. Pending sales had risen in June and July as well, by 13.2% and 4.1%, so contract activity has stayed ahead of last year for three straight months. Williamson County stood out, with pendings up 9.3% to 960.
The gap is narrowing, though. June's pending gain was 13.2%, July's was 4.1%, and August's was 1.5%. Buyers are still signing contracts at a slightly faster pace than a year ago, but by a smaller margin each month.
Is inventory rising again in Austin?
Month to month, slightly. Months of inventory went from 4.4 in June to 4.7 in July to 5.1 in August. Year over year, it is still lower: August's 5.1 is down 0.4 from August 2025, and active listings of 13,676 are down 6.5%. New listings fell 7.0% to 3,579, so fewer sellers came to market in August than a year earlier.
Five months sits inside the four to six month band generally read as balanced. The market has drifted from the lower edge of that band toward the middle over the summer, which is a shift worth watching rather than a return to the oversupply of the past two years.
What does this mean if you are buying or selling right now?
Sellers should price off the current month rather than the June headline. The August median is $412,000, not $450,000, and the average close-to-list price across the metro was 93.2%, up from 92.2% a year earlier. That ratio is Unlock MLS's average close price as a share of list price, a different measure from the sold-to-list figure in last month's report, so the two should not be compared directly.
Buyers have a little more room than they did in July: a lower median, more months of inventory, and fewer competing closings. That said, pendings are still up year over year, so the extra room is modest. As John Crowe, the 2026 Unlock MLS and ABoR president, put it, the ebbs and flows are normal in a changing housing market. Travis, Williamson and Hays each moved by different amounts in August, and a metro-wide figure is a poor proxy for any single neighborhood.
One note on timing: Unlock MLS published the August report on September 15, 2026. The September report will show whether August was a single soft month or the start of a new leg down.
