Average rent in Travis County hits $1,700 a month, report
AUSTIN (KXAN) -- A report looking at five Central Texas counties found despite slight reprieve, rent and home prices are still going up year-over-year.
Across five counties in our Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA) -- Bastrop, Caldwell, Hays, Williamson and Travis -- home sale prices increased overall by nearly 8% from 2021 to 2022. The median home price across the MSA was more than $500,000 last year, according to the report.
While more expensive prices have historically been concentrated in Austin, the report shows the counties with the largest increases in average rent prices were actually the exterior counties as people were pushed out of central Austin.
The report noted that Travis County continues to see the highest average rent price at more than $1,700, but that counties at the outskirts of the MSA -- Bastrop and Caldwell -- saw the highest percent increase in average rent from the year prior hitting an average of $1,361 and $1,254 respectively.
"Although increases in home sale prices and rents were not as steep as the growth seen between 2020 to 2021, the continuous growth of housing costs across the region has brought the need for affordable housing to the forefront for many families," said Nora Linares-Moeller, the executive director of HousingWorks Austin.
The report looked at subsidized housing and found while Central Texas counties are making progress, those units are still unevenly distributed and don't meet high demand as prices continue to rise.
We'll have a better idea of how many affordable units are now on the ground in Austin when HousingWorks publishes its Strategic Housing Blueprint scorecard later this month.
"We're seeing progress, but of course there's more that needs to be done, and I think the scorecard will show a similar trend," Woody Rogers, the research manager for HousingWorks, said.