Let’s just say that my eyes widened a little without the help of coffee when I read this story from Steve Brown. According to Fitch Ratings, Texas home prices are way overvalued, by 11 percent they say, and there could be a reckoning coming thanks to falling oil prices.
The financial analysts at Fitch are concerned about the year-over-year growth in Houston, Austin, and Dallas, which posted home price increases of 20 percent since 2011.
One of the great things about the reports published by the Real Estate Center at Texas A&M University is that you don’t have to be an economist to understand them. Luis Torres, Jim Gaines, and Mark Dotzour all do a fantastic job of breaking down the information into digestible bits. I was very impressed by Torres when I heard him speak at the National Association of Real Estate Editors conference in Houston, and having previously worked with Gaines and Dotzour, I know that they are brilliant.
Of course, as the Real Estate Center publishes its annual outlook, we enjoyed taking a more in-depth gaze at inventory and what the numbers really mean. Months of inventory is a significant indicator for housing demand, and inventory can greatly influence pricing.
The recent report from the Real Estate Center at Texas A&M University shows a 2 percent dip in sales at the close of August from a year ago. That’s keeping with this year’s trends of higher prices and lower sales volume, as five of the last 8 months of 2014 have posted lower sales from the previous year.
“The agents tell me they could sell many more houses if they just had the inventory,” Real Estate Center economist Dr. James Gaines told Steve Brown at the Dallas Morning News. According to Brown’s August figures, the median home sales price in North Texas is up 8 percent from a year ago, with prices up 7 percent over the first 8 months of last year. Of course, with higher prices, that means fewer homebuyers overall who are able to afford a mortgage.
So, what can you get for a cool million in Dallas? The Motley Fool asked that question last week, and came up with 2142 Kessler Parkway, a luxurious North Oak Cliff house we previously featured as our Inwood Mortgage Home of the Week. When we featured this three-bedroom, two-and-a-half-bath home last July, it was on the market for $967,000. Today it’s listed, as the Motley Fool column writes, at $998,000. The more recent listing with Briggs Freeman Sotheby’s Kate Mote, is 3 percent higher than the July 2013 listing price.
The house is spacious, comes with a pool, and is genuinely very, very nice. But with an asking price of $998,000, you don’t get quite the same bang for your buck as you would in other cities, like Miami or Phoenix.
With Texas and Dallas clocking in a small uptick in inventory, everyone’s wondering if we the market is poised to stabilize soon and if our time of scarcity and rising prices is over.
According to the latest report from CoreLogic, not so much.
“Home prices are continuing to rise fueled by ongoing tight supply, low rates, and aggressive investor buying on the East and West Coast,” said President and CEO of CoreLogic Anand Nallathambi. “The expected surge in the number of homes for sale has not materialized to date as many homeowners are staying put and waiting for better economic times and higher prices in the future.”
Slow growing inventory is choking sales growth and driving prices up in the Dallas real estate market, with only 2.4 months of inventory in the Dallas market — an increase of 0.2 months from last quarter — according to the latest quarterly report from the Texas Association of Realtors and the Real Estate Center at Texas A&M University.
As a result the median home price in Dallas is up 9.81 percent from the first quarter of 2014, an increase of 6.81 percent from the same time a year ago and the second consecutive quarter our city has seen an increase in home prices. Statewide, inventory grew for the first time in three years, up to 3.6 in the second quarter of 2014 from an all-time low of 3.4 months in the first quarter of this year. Still, inventory is tighter than a pair of skinny jeans after Thanksgiving and continues to pose problems for our market.
Maybe so, or maybe the market is just taking a breather while the summer heat is on before it grows legs again. According to Standard & Poor’s/Case-Shiller’s Home Price Index, Dallas has seen the smallest increase in home prices since August of last year. Still, prices are growing, at an albeit slower rate. In fact, all of the MSAs Case-Shiller surveys saw growth from April to May of this year, even beleaguered Detroit.
Regionally, home prices increased 8.6 percent in Dallas from May 2013 to May 2014, and between April and May of this year, the increase was 1.3 percent. That’s a decrease from March to April 2014, during which Dallas saw a 1.6 percent price growth. Nationally, housing prices are up 9.4 percent from May 2013, with a flat month-over-month HPI.
Modern and affordable, Buzz Lofts in the southern Dallas neighborhood of The Cedars are a popular choice for those who want loft living south of downtown Dallas.
Condos are hot and getting hotter, according to the Texas Condominium Mid-Year Sales Report from the Texas Association of Realtors. Statewide, condo sales rose an average of 10.5 percent year-over-year between the months of January and May of 2014. In San Antonio condo sales were up 18 percent, followed by Austin at 14 percent, Houston at 6 percent and Dallas at 4 percent.
