The venerable Case-Shiller report that tracks pre-owned home sales, not new builders homes or subdivisions, puts Dallas near the top of the list of cities with the biggest home price gains. Which is, of course, impressive.
Standard & Poor’s Case-Shiller home price index says Dallas-area home prices were up 9 percent from February of 2015.
Dallas ranked fourth, behind Portland, Seattle and Denver as the the cities with the largest year-over-year price gains in the closely watched Wall Street housing metric report.
Nationwide, Dallas home prices were 5.3 percent higher than a year ago.
But February numbers slipped slightly from 9.2 percent in January.
“Home prices continue to rise twice as fast as inflation, but the pace is easing off in the most recent numbers,” S&P’s David M. Blitzer said in the report. “Rising prices are a concern in many parts of the country.
“The visible supply of homes on the market is low at 4.8 months in the last report,” he said. “Homeowners looking to sell their house and trade up to a larger house or a more desirable location are concerned with finding that new house.”
Home prices were higher in all 20 major markets included in Case-Shiller’s survey.
The largest gains were found in Portland (11.9 percent), Seattle (11 percent) and Denver (9.7 percent).
In fourth place, Dallas-area home prices are now at record levels, almost 24 percent higher than before the recession and housing market crash of 2009.
The inventory of houses for sale in some price brackets and areas remains near a record low. Sales of local area houses in the area are about 10 percent higher than in 2015. Experts tell us the usual: as long as job growth here stays strong, and inventory remains low, prices will continue to increase. And there is nothing on the horizon to slow it down.
Well, except for stories like the one about Comerica Bank, who got over leveraged in oil and gas lending and may be reducing staff. (Full disclosure: I bank at Comerica and love it. If it becomes a big bank, toodles!)
But yeah, job growth is pretty darn fantastic in DFW. I have been west to Westlake, and am going east to Heath today. Was north in Plano last night and last week. What I am seeing and hearing from the agents there is that sales are incredible and hot OUTSIDE of Dallas, in the suburban areas.
In fact, one agent I spoke with yesterday says the multi million market is definitely different this year than last. Those white-hot sales (and inventory dearth) are coming in under $1 million. There is actually a lot more inventory in Dallas in the multi-million dollar spectrum. So I would have to disagree with Case-Shiller or just note they may not be clued in to the multi-million market.
