Austin's housing market kept cooling in August, with 844 homes sold citywide, a 10.3% drop from a year earlier, and the median price falling to $560,000. Across the wider metro area, sales, median prices and total dollar volume all slid compared with August 2025, even as a modest uptick in pending contracts suggested some buyers are still circling.
Metro-Wide Numbers Point Down
The Austin-Round Rock-San Marcos metro area recorded 2,501 residential home sales in August, a 7.3% year-over-year decline, according to the Unlock MLS August 2026 Central Texas Housing Report. The median residential price across the metro fell to $412,000, down 6.4% from a year earlier, and total dollar volume of homes sold dropped 11.1% to roughly $1.4 billion. Pending sales, however, moved in the opposite direction, rising 1.5% year over year to 2,623 transactions, a sign that some contracts are still being signed even as closed sales shrink.
As CultureMap Austin reported, the same report showed declines rippling through the city itself. Austin's 814 pending sales in August marked a 9.2% drop from a year earlier, while active listings fell 14.5% to 4,554. Despite fewer homes on the market, buyers appear to be negotiating harder before closing than they were paying full price outright — though sellers did gain a bit of leverage, with homes closing at an average of 93.3% of list price in August, up from 91.6% a year earlier.
Travis and Williamson Counties Diverge
Travis County posted 1,111 residential sales in August, down 9.5% from a year earlier, with the median price falling 6.4% to $489,000, per the same Unlock MLS report. Williamson County saw a smaller sales decline of 4.1% to 855 homes, with its median price dropping 5.9% to $399,900. Yet Williamson stood out for one figure moving the other direction: pending sales there climbed 9.3% year over year to 960 transactions, outpacing the metro-wide pending gain and hinting at relatively stronger near-term demand north of Austin.
Unlock MLS's monthly Central Texas Housing Reports are based on MLS-only data and cover the Austin-Round Rock-San Marcos metro area, the city of Austin, and surrounding counties, according to the organization's market research page. That MLS-only scope is worth keeping in mind, since other trackers measure the same market differently and land on different numbers.
Other Trackers Show a Different Picture
Redfin, for instance, reported 2,725 Austin homes sold in August 2026, actually up from 2,472 a year earlier, and pegged the median sale price over the three months ending in August at $550,000, down just 0.97% from the same period a year prior. Homes in that Redfin window sold in an average of 57 days, compared with 65 days a year earlier, per Redfin's Austin market data. Realtor.com separately described Texas broadly as a buyer's market in August 2026 with homes selling for about 99% of asking price on average, according to Realtor.com's Texas housing trends page. The dossier does not explain why Unlock MLS and Redfin arrive at different sales counts and median prices for the same month, likely reflecting differences in geographic boundaries and time-period definitions between the two sources.
Zooming out, the Texas Real Estate Research Center at Texas A&M reported that Austin's year-to-date closed-sales pace was still running 8.7% above 2025's pace as of June, even as home prices in the city had declined 2.2% year over year that same month — a sign that softer prices haven't necessarily meant a full-year sales slump. Active listings and months of supply in Austin were also lower than a year earlier as of June, according to the Center's Texas Housing Insight report. Statewide, Texas recorded 34,956 closed home sales in June, up 8.6% year over year, suggesting Austin's August cooldown hasn't necessarily spread evenly across the rest of the state.
