The aftermath of Austin’s tech boom in the COVID-19 pandemic era, and the layoffs that followed, are still reshaping the Texas city’s housing market, according to a new report.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, an influx of tech workers created an unprecedented spike in housing demand that sent sales and property values soaring, according to a report released on April 20 by Homes.com.
The Austin real estate market hit its all-time peak in 2022, with a median sold price of $555,400. The surge was driven in part by some of the country’s highest-profile tech employers—including Tesla, Apple, and Amazon—which either relocated headquarters or expanded their presence in the area to take advantage of Texas’s favorable tax environment.
According to the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, high-tech occupations accounted for as much as 11.1 percent of all employment in the Austin area in 2021, nearly three times the national average of 4.2 percent.
However, the momentum shifted significantly in 2023 and 2024 as the tech sector entered a period of contraction. Dallas Fed data showed that Austin accounted for about 20 percent of the total number of Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification layoffs in the state during the first 10 months of 2023, and a significant portion was tied to technology firms.
The result is a cooling market characterized by price corrections, according to Homes.com, a far cry from the bidding wars that defined the city just a few years ago.
But the legacy of that earlier worker influx can still be seen in Austin’s housing supply. A report released in August 2025 by Redfin found that although permits for new apartment buildings have fallen nationwide, the Austin–Round Rock metro area remains well above both its pre-pandemic pace and the national average.
According to that report, the national permitting rate stood at 12.8 units per 10,000 people, while the Austin–Round Rock metro was issuing permits at a rate of 63.6 per 10,000 residents. Before the pandemic, that rate was 49.6 per 10,000, and it climbed as high as 94.5 during the boom.
Signs of renewed buyer interest are beginning to emerge in the once-overheated market, according to new data from Texas real estate website Unlock MLS.
In the Austin-Round Rock-San Marcos metro area, the number of homes sold in March rose by less than 0.5 percent from a year earlier, while the median sales price fell 3 percent to about $415,000, according to Unlock MLS. The number of pending sales, which reflect homes under contract that have not yet closed, jumped by more than 15 percent.
The data also point to a more balanced market; months of inventory fell to 5.5 in March. In general, six months or more of inventory signals a buyer’s market, in which supply exceeds demand and gives buyers greater bargaining power. A year earlier, Austin had 4.7 months of inventory, a level that gave sellers more leverage.
Nationally, existing-home sales also weakened in March, falling to their slowest pace in nine months as lower mortgage rates failed to draw more buyers during what is typically the busiest season of the year. The number of homes sold fell by 3.6 percent from February and was down by 1 percent from March 2025, according to the National Association of Realtors.
