Ed 
Austin homes sold for 93.2% of their original list price in August 2026. That’s 1,128 closed sales in Travis County, and the City of Austin by itself came in at 93.3%, according to the Unlock MLS sales data we track at Neuhaus Realty Group. On a house that first hit the market at $500,000, that’s a $466,000 check (before commissions and closing costs, I know, I know).
So if you’re typing “how to price my house in Austin” into ChatGPT right now, here is the short answer. Price it like the buyer is going to hand you about 93% of whatever number you pick first, unless you pick a number good enough to sell in the first two weeks. Those homes got 99.2% of their original price. That’s the whole game this fall, and the rest of this post is the 10 years of data behind it.
And yeah, 93% isn’t good. Over the last 10 years we’ve normally been shooting for around 97%. What that tells me is the market is still weak, and people are still pricing their houses way above where the market is. That’s my read, so lets check it against the numbers instead of just taking my word for it.
What is the Austin sale to list price ratio right now?
It depends on which list price you mean, and that one word changes the whole story.
Most market reports give you sale price divided by the final list price, the price the house was sitting at when it went under contract. By that measure Travis County sellers got 97.2% in August. Sounds fine right. But a lot of those houses got to that final price by cutting, sometimes twice. Divide by the original list price instead, the number the seller started with on day one, and August drops to 93.2%. That four-point gap is the price cuts the final number hides.
Across Travis, Williamson and Hays counties, 48.8% of the homes that sold from March through August 2026 had a price cut before they found a buyer. Almost half. So the original price is the honest number, and it’s the one I’d want to know if it were my house.
Original list price in Austin, 10 years of it
Here’s every year since 2016, sale price as a percent of original list price, by county plus the City of Austin. The last column is Travis County against the final list price, for contrast.
| Year | Travis County | Williamson County | Hays County | City of Austin | Travis County, % of final list |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2016 | 96.9% | 97.5% | 96.8% | 97.0% | 98.5% |
| 2017 | 96.5% | 97.1% | 96.5% | 96.6% | 98.3% |
| 2018 | 96.7% | 97.0% | 96.6% | 96.8% | 98.4% |
| 2019 | 97.2% | 97.3% | 96.5% | 97.3% | 98.6% |
| 2020 | 98.9% | 99.2% | 98.2% | 98.9% | 99.7% |
| 2021 | 104.7% | 105.9% | 104.4% | 104.7% | 105.1% |
| 2022 | 99.8% | 99.3% | 99.1% | 100.1% | 101.8% |
| 2023 | 92.9% | 93.2% | 92.8% | 93.2% | 97.2% |
| 2024 | 93.3% | 94.3% | 93.6% | 93.2% | 97.2% |
| 2025 | 92.7% | 93.2% | 92.6% | 92.7% | 96.9% |
| 2026 Jan-Aug | 93.8% | 93.7% | 93.2% | 94.1% | 97.3% |
Sale price as a percent of original list price, average per sale. Source: Neuhaus Realty Group analysis of Unlock MLS closed residential sales. 2026 runs through August.
Ok so does my 97% hold up? It does. Across all 10 years from 2016 through 2025, Travis County averaged 97.4% of original list price, and in the four normal years before the pandemic (2016 through 2019) it was 96.8%. The City of Austin was 97.5% and 96.9%. Williamson ran a touch higher, Hays a touch lower, but every one of them lands within about a point of 97.
And then look at 2021 (oh, 2021). Sellers got 104.7% of their original price in Travis County. Nobody should be pricing off that year, and yet I’d bet it’s still the year a lot of sellers have in their heads. Thaler’s whole thing in Misbehaving is the endowment effect, we value stuff more just because it’s ours. Add a 2021 online estimate on top of that and you get a list price that’s a wish, not a number.
Now to be fair to the market, 2026 is not getting worse than 2025. Travis County was at 92.7% for all of 2025 and 93.8% for January through August 2026. August 2026 at 93.2% beat August 2025 at 91.6%. So the weakness I’m talking about is weakness against normal, not a fresh slide. We’ve been stuck three to four points under the old 97% norm since 2023, and we’re still there.
Selling a house in Austin in fall 2026: the 14-day split
This is the table I’d hand every seller before we talk about a number. It splits every home that sold from March through August 2026 by how long it sat.
| Area | Days on market | Share of sales | % of original list | % of final list | Had a price cut |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Travis County | 0 to 14 days | 32.3% | 99.2% | 99.2% | 2.0% |
| Travis County | 15 to 60 days | 34.9% | 94.7% | 96.9% | 46.1% |
| Travis County | 61+ days | 32.8% | 88.6% | 96.2% | 85.2% |
| Williamson County | 0 to 14 days | 27.0% | 99.0% | 99.1% | 3.6% |
| Williamson County | 15 to 60 days | 33.8% | 95.4% | 97.7% | 49.2% |
| Williamson County | 61+ days | 39.2% | 89.2% | 97.1% | 88.8% |
| Hays County | 0 to 14 days | 22.6% | 98.6% | 98.9% | 6.8% |
| Hays County | 15 to 60 days | 36.3% | 95.0% | 97.6% | 51.7% |
| Hays County | 61+ days | 41.1% | 89.6% | 97.3% | 88.4% |
| City of Austin | 0 to 14 days | 36.9% | 99.2% | 99.2% | 1.7% |
| City of Austin | 15 to 60 days | 34.5% | 94.5% | 96.7% | 45.4% |
| City of Austin | 61+ days | 28.6% | 88.2% | 95.8% | 85.1% |
Closed sales March through August 2026. Source: Neuhaus Realty Group analysis of Unlock MLS closed residential sales.
Read the Travis rows. Homes that sold in 14 days or less got 99.2% of their original price, and only 2.0% of them ever cut. Homes that sat past 60 days got 88.6% of their original price, and 85.2% of them cut. Same county, same six months.
On a $500,000 original ask, that’s $496,000 versus $443,000. A $53,000 difference, and the only thing that separated them was how close the first price was to the market.
Here’s the sneaky part. Look at the final list column. The 61+ day homes still got 96.2% of their final list price, so the seller’s agent can say “we got close to asking” with a straight face. They did, of the fourth asking price. (If you want to see that cut cycle in real dollars, I ran the counterfactual on what overpricing cost Travis County sellers back in May.)
One honest note on the data. These numbers start from the original price on the listing that actually sold, so a seller who pulled the house off the market and relaunched it fresh gets measured from the relaunch price. The real gap is probably a little wider than this table shows, not narrower.
Is fall a bad time to sell? What the Austin housing market does in Q4
Fall pays less than spring. In Travis County the fourth quarter came in below the second quarter in 9 of the last 10 years, and the only exception was 2020.
| Year | Q1 | Q2 | Q3 | Q4 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2016 | 96.9% | 97.9% | 96.7% | 95.6% |
| 2017 | 96.4% | 97.6% | 96.4% | 95.4% |
| 2018 | 96.6% | 97.8% | 96.6% | 95.6% |
| 2019 | 96.4% | 97.9% | 97.4% | 96.6% |
| 2020 | 98.0% | 98.6% | 98.9% | 99.6% |
| 2021 | 104.9% | 109.5% | 103.6% | 100.2% |
| 2022 | 103.6% | 104.8% | 96.1% | 91.0% |
| 2023 | 91.5% | 94.4% | 93.5% | 91.5% |
| 2024 | 93.2% | 94.7% | 92.9% | 91.9% |
| 2025 | 93.1% | 94.4% | 91.8% | 91.3% |
| 2026 | 92.6% | 94.7% | 93.7% (Jul-Aug) | n/a |
Travis County sale price as a percent of original list price, by quarter. Q4 2026 has not happened yet. Source: Neuhaus Realty Group analysis of Unlock MLS closed residential sales.
Before the pandemic the Q4 dip was about two points. In 2023, 2024 and 2025 it’s been about three (94.4% to 91.5%, 94.7% to 91.9%, 94.4% to 91.3%). So if you list in October, you’re selling into the softest stretch of the year. That’s not a reason to panic, it’s a reason to price for it.
And I think this fourth quarter has some extra weight on it. It’s an election year, with midterms on November 3. Interest rates are way up, Freddie Mac had the 30-year at 7.28% for the week of October 1, up from 6.34% a year ago and the highest since November 2023. And diesel prices are way up, the EIA had on-highway diesel at $6.382 a gallon the week of September 28, versus $3.754 the same week last year, after setting a record of $6.529 the week before. Diesel moves everything that gets trucked, groceries, lumber, the moving van. I think people are actually having trouble purchasing anything right now, never mind a house.
Will Q4 be weaker than last year’s 91.3%? I don’t know. I’m a broker, not a fortune teller (if I could call this market to the month I’d be on a boat somewhere, not writing blog posts). But I’d plan for continued weakness and be pleasantly surprised, not the other way around.
How to price my house in Austin this fall
So here is the plan I’d walk you through, built off the tables above. The full CMA method, absorption rate and all that, lives in our complete guide to pricing your home in Austin. This is the fall version.
If you only remember one thing about how to price my house in Austin from this post, make it the first step.
1. Ask what your house sells for in 14 days, not what it’s worth. Those are different questions right now. The 0-14 day group in Travis County was about a third of all sales, and they’re the ones who got 99.2% of their first number. Your goal is to be in that group.
2. Ignore the final list ratio in any report you read. 97% of list sounds great and it hides the cuts. Ask your agent for sale price to original list price on the comps, then decide.
3. Take three points off whatever spring would have gotten you. That’s the Q4 dip in each of the last three years. If your neighbor sold in May, their price isn’t your price in November.
4. Know which seller you are. If you bought in 2021 through 2023 you may not have room to cut, and that changes the math. I broke that down by purchase year in who can and can’t cut their price in Austin.
5. If you can wait, the data says spring pays more. Q2 has beaten Q4 in Travis County 9 years out of 10. That’s not that hard right. But waiting costs you six more months of payments, taxes and insurance, so it’s only free if the house is paid off or you love living in it.
Want to see where your house actually lands before you pick a number? You can browse what’s selling in Travis County, Williamson County and Hays County, or get a number on your own place below.
Thinking About Selling?
The first step is knowing what your home is actually worth. Our free tool uses real MLS comps — not Zestimate guesswork.
Methodology: Neuhaus Realty Group analysis of Unlock MLS closed residential sales (houses, condos and townhomes; leases excluded), January 2016 through August 2026, 400,660 sales, each MLS listing counted once. Percentages are averages of each sale’s price divided by its original or final list price. County is the MLS county field; City of Austin is the MLS city field. Days on market is the MLS days-on-market field. Data pulled October 2, 2026.
Frequently Asked Questions
Lets talk about your number
I’ve been selling homes here since 2009, and if you boil how to price my house in Austin down to one line, it’s this. The one thing the data says loud and clear is that your first price is the most important number in the whole sale. Get it right and you’re in the 99% group. Get it wrong and the market will find the right number for you, it just takes 60 days and a few cuts to get there.
If you’re thinking about listing this fall, or you’re trying to decide whether to wait, reach out to me and I’ll pull the original-list numbers for your neighborhood. Lets grab coffee and look at it together. Be safe, be good, and be nice to people.
