Did you see the story about corrosion in most of the pipes in Alaska’s largest oil field? I did and it caught my attention. The field will be shut down for weeks or months as BP replaces pipe. The shut-down will keep around 400,000 barrels of Alaskan oil per day from coming to the market. This is a lot of oil. Gas and other petroleum products are bound to go up. The announcement sent the price of a barrel of oil up $2.

So why am I posting this in a real estate blog? Two reasons… First, with the price of gas going up and up, more people will be on the internet rather than on neighborhood streets looking at homes. Search Austin listings online now. Second, there are a lot of building materials that require petroleum. Gas or diesel is required to transport building material. This means that the cost of building new homes is going up again.

Anyone on the fence about buying, especially if you’re looking at new homes, might want to get moving. With the Fed not raising rates for first time in a long time, interest rates will probably be stable for a while. This, combined with higher construction costs, means that things aren’t going to get any less expensive especially in hot markets like Austin.

According to Alamo Title Co., the month of July saw sold average sales prices increased 9.20% to $237,881 compared to $217,849 in 2005. For the week of July 30-August 5, sold average sales price increased 16.04% to $249,773. (From Sam Chapman’s Austin Real Estate Blog)