Austin July 2026: What Listings and Contracts Show by County

The Austin metro recorded fewer new and active listings in July 2026 than a year earlier, while pending contracts increased. Yet Hays County had both fewer listings and weaker transaction activity. Unlock MLS’s report, released August 11, 2026, shows why agents need to examine supply and transactions together: fewer competing homes alone do not establish stronger buyer demand.

What July’s four measures show

These are residential for-sale figures for July 2026; parentheses show changes from July 2025.

Source: July county and metro tables. The selected counties are compared with the metro, not added to it.

New listings measure incoming listing activity. Active listings describe the available pool under the report’s counting rules. Pending and closed sales capture different stages of transactions.

Those stages matter when building a seller’s competition list. Unlock MLS defines Active as available for showings. Active Under Contract means an offer has been accepted but the listing remains on the market. Pending means an accepted offer and an off-market listing, while Closed means the purchase agreement has been fulfilled. A pending listing therefore is not a completed comparable sale. These distinctions come from the MLS status definitions, updated March 31, 2026.

How the counties change the interpretation

Travis County combined fewer new listings with more pending sales. Williamson County’s active inventory declined even as new listings increased. Hays County recorded declines across all four measures, pairing reduced supply with weaker transaction activity. The county tables show that the metro’s combination of fewer new listings and more contracts was not universal.

These patterns help frame a seller’s competition review, but they do not quantify how much listing inflows, contracts or other status changes contributed to inventory. The next step is to establish whether comparable homes are going under contract, fewer replacements are arriving, or both. County totals cannot answer that for a particular subdivision, property type or price band.

Inventory was lower annually, higher than June

The comparison period also changes the metro story. Unlock MLS’s June release, published July 14, 2026, reported 13,245 active listings, 4,712 new listings, 2,994 pending sales and 2,961 closings.

Compared with those published counts, July had 4.2% more active listings, while new listings fell 9.2%, pending sales fell 5.4% and closings fell 7.5%. These are our calculations from the June and July releases, without seasonal adjustment or reconciliation of possible revisions.

The year-over-year inventory decline should not be presented as a June-to-July decline. Keep the measurement period and geography consistent when extending the comparison through our inventory data and reports.

How inventory can fall while contract activity weakens

Consider a hypothetical, simplified market with 100 available homes at the start of each comparison month. In the earlier period, 30 homes enter and 25 leave for accepted contracts, leaving 105. In the later period, 15 enter and 20 leave for contracts, leaving 95. Assume no withdrawals, expirations or returns to market.

Ending supply is lower even though contract activity is weaker: the fall in incoming listings more than offsets the decline in homes moving under contract.

Actual listing histories are more complicated. Withdrawn and expired listings can remove competition without a purchase. Unlock MLS recognizes those statuses and listings on hold in its status guide. The monthly release does not provide a complete accounting of these movements.

Nor can inventory be reconciled by subtracting both pending sales and closings from new listings. A home can pass through both transaction stages; without linked listing histories, that risks counting its departure twice. This distinction underlies our coverage of listing supply and transaction activity.

Keep the comparison’s limits in view

This analysis retains Unlock MLS’s residential for-sale labels and excludes its leasing tables. It does not assume the public release explains every status included in each aggregate or establishes a precise inventory snapshot date.

Those limits also matter when comparing providers. A Texas Real Estate Research Center explanation dated May 13, 2021 identifies timing, property type and listing status as reasons inventory counts differ. Apply the same checks when using our local housing market research.

Turn the report into a seller’s competition review

Start with a fixed group of genuine substitutes: similar location, property type, size, condition and asking-price range. Save the search criteria and dates so the next review measures the same segment.

Track why each competitor leaves. Separate accepted contracts from withdrawals, expirations and holds, and record new arrivals and returns to market. Keep active-under-contract properties identifiable instead of treating every visible listing as equally available. These are proposed review steps, not additional findings about July.

Use that record to inform the pricing decision. If competing homes are securing contracts while the subject property gets little response, investigate differences in price, condition and terms. If competitors are withdrawing and few replacements arrive, describe reduced choice without claiming buyers have become more eager. Pair the review with completed comparable sales before recommending a price.