We are still cooking when it comes to rising property values, though the heat is no longer set to boil: Dallas’ March home price increase was only 1.4%, the lowest annual increase in nine months, and below February’s. But Dow Jones’ Case-Shiller March report says oil pries be damned, Texas is still killing it as real estate becomes a more scarce commodity:
“The economy is supporting the price increases with improving labor markets, falling unemployment rates and extremely low mortgage rates,” S&P’s David Blitzer said in the report. “Another factor behind rising home prices is the limited supply of homes on the market.
“The number of homes currently on the market is less than 2 percent of the number of households in the U.S., the lowest percentage seen since the mid-1980s.”
Here is what I am loving: while nationwide home prices are still 10% below what they were in 2006, when the market was just nuts, Dallas-area home prices are now more than 25 percent higher than they were before the recession.
We can thank the more than 80,000 people a year moving here for making our homes short in supply, our days on market about 3 months or less (less in Plano-Frisco) except, of course, when you are talking the eight digit properties.
Price movements, said the report, vary across the country. “The Pacific Northwest and the west continue to be the strongest regions. Seattle, Portland, Oregon and Denver had the largest year-over-year price increases. These cities also saw some of the largest declines in unemployment rates among the 20 cities included in the S&P/Case-Shiller Indices. The northeast and upper mid-west regions were at the other end of the ranking. The four cities with the smallest year-over-year prices gains were Washington DC, Chicago, New York, and Cleveland. The unemployment rates in Chicago and Cleveland rose from March 2015 to March 2016.”
I want to remind you that Case-Shiller only tracks re-sales, not new home construction sales such as those you would find in a new subdivision. And it only tracks MLS reported sales.
There is no doubt that in North Texas, affordable homes are in short supply. The tax valuation on my san Antonio home is up 33.5%. There’s less than a three-month supply for buyers to peruse, and many agents tell me stories of same day sales, bidding wars, cash sales. All in all, pre-owned home sales in North texas are up 14% this year, which was predicted by many to be a far quieter year for Real Estate.
