09/09/2016
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Home sales bounce back
North Texas prices show big jump, too, after July slowdown
By STEVE BROWN
Real Estate Editor [email protected]
After a pause in home-buying in July, the North Texas home market came roaring back last month.
August sales of pre-owned homes by real estate agents soared 12 percent from the same month in 2015. And home prices were up 10 percent year over year, according to data from the Real Estate Center at Texas A&M University.
Last month’s strong home resales came after July purchases fell 2 percent from a year earlier, the first decline in almost two years.
“We had a dip in July, and I was kind of nervous about that,” said James Gaines, chief economist for the Real Estate Center. “But sales bounced right
back.”
Real estate agents sold a record 10,860 single-family homes through their multiple listing services, according to North Texas Real Estate Information Systems.
“The only explanation anyone has been able to give me about the July slowdown was we had a lot of rain and the title companies got backed up,” Gaines said. “The Dallas-Fort Worth market is still going strong.
“It’s probably going to be another record year in terms of transactions,” he said. “Obviously home prices are going to hit a record high.”
Through the first eight months of 2016, real estate agents have sold more than 69,000 houses in the more than two dozen North Texas counties included in the survey. Year-to-date sales are 6 percent higher than the same period in 2015.
“There is no real letup in sight,” Gaines said. “The employment numbers for Dallas-Fort Worth are still good.
“There’s still a housing shortage,” he said. “The home prices are going to continue to go up.”
North Texas median home prices have risen more than 40 percent in the last five years. In August, the median price of houses sold by agents was $230,000.
So far in 2016, median North Texas home sales prices are up 10 percent — one of the largest gains in the nation.
There were fewer than 20,000 single-family homes listed for sale with real estate agents at the end of August, 6 percent fewer than a year earlier.
“I have an agent in my office trying to find a property for her daughter, and everybody is bidding $5,000 and $10,000 more than the house is listed for,” said Mike Bowman of Century 21 Mike Bowman Realtors. “We had one condo a couple of weeks ago where we got 20 contracts in within 48 hours after it came on the market.
“I’ve never been in a market like this,” he said. “I know it won’t last forever.”
Even with the huge gains in Dallas-Fort Worth housing costs, the price of an average home is still low compared with the most expensive residential markets in the country.
Nationwide residential sales firm Coldwell Banker Real Estate just released its its annual list of the priciest U.S. home markets, and there were no Texas markets near the top of the ranking.
The Silicon Valley suburb of Saratoga, Calif., heads the list, with an average home listing price of $2,453,718.
All of the top 10 most costly home markets are in California, according to Coldwell Banker.
“Silicon Valley has been at the forefront of innovation in the U.S. for years, with leading tech companies attracting some of the brightest entrepreneurial minds in the world,” Cold-well Banker CEO Charlie Young said in the report. “Clearly, the amenities of the region are also impacting home prices.”
Coldwell Banker said there are now 25 communities in the U.S. where the average price is more than $1 million.
None of them are in Texas.
The most expensive Texas market is Austin, with a $414,563 average.
Two North Texas cities made the Texas Top 10: Keller at $311,945 and Frisco at $291,808.
Coldwell Banker’s 2016 Home Listing Report analyzed more than 50,000 four-bedroom, two-bathroom home listings across more than 2,000 U.S. cities.
Coldwell Banker says the most affordable places to buy a house are Detroit ($64,100), Cleveland ($73,073) and Park Forest, Ill. ($78,392).
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