Denton TX Real Estate

Powell Fires Warning Shot at the Housing Market

This is a rough transcript of Jerome Powell's remarks on housing during this week's post-FOMC press conference. I apologize for any errors. Powell's remarks on housing come around the 1:51 mark toward the end of the press conference. See video below. It appears Jerome has finally figured out housing inflation is a serious headwind to the Fed's efforts to curtail raging inflation. It makes you wonder what they were looking at for the entirety of 2021 when the Powell Fed was pretending inflation was transitory. Question from Bankrate's Mark Hamrick: I Wonder what your assessment [...]

North Texas Housing Market Looks Like A Bubble

The North Texas housing market is looking like a bubble waiting to burst. Home prices continued to melt up in April. Median and average home prices hit new all-time highs across the Dallas-Fort Worth area. The median home price in Denton County hit a new record high of $480,000, an increase of 22.9 percent from last year. Average prices hit $577,607. That was up 25.1 percent year-over-year. The melt-up in prices is pretty astounding considering mortgage interest rates are now solidly above 5 percent. Monthly payments for a prospective home buyer in North Texas have [...]

New Home Sales Market Finally Cooling Off

The market for new home sales is finally cooling off. The Census Bureau reported new home sales for March at 735,000 units (SAAR). This was 8.6% below the revised February estimate. It was also a 12.6% drop from March of last year. The median sales price of a new home contracted in March 2022 was $436,700. The average sales price was $523,900. Those were both new record highs. The unadjusted inventory of new homes stood at 5.7 months, up from 5.3 in February. Sky high prices and rising interest rates are now acting to cool [...]

Denton County Home Buyers Front-Run Rate Hikes Sending Prices Soaring

Fear of missing out (FOMO) was the theme last month in Denton County Texas as home buyers behaved like irrational humans often do. Buyers jumped into the local housing market front-running the coming Federal Reserve rate hikes. Home prices shattered records as a result. The median price of home rose 25.3% year-over-year to a record $464,000. Average prices rose 23.6% to a record high $554,098. Closed sales were roughly flat compared to last year. That's a testament to how frenzied the activity was given the current backdrop of spiraling interest rates. Pending sales (contracts) fell 10 [...]

Mortgage Rates Breach 5% Mark After Brainard Speech

U.S. mortgage rates breached the critical 5 percent level today. Prepared remarks from FOMC dove Lael Brainard spooked the markets into a tailspin sending yields on the 10-year Treasury above 2.56 percent. Average mortgage interest rates quoted from Mortgage News Daily spiked to 5.02 percent. This is the first time rates have been this high since 2018. You may remember that the fourth quarter of 2018 also saw the stock market and real estate markets come unglued before the Fed stepped in to intervene. Unfortunately for real estate bulls, this time is different. Instead of [...]

New Home Sales Begin Slide As Interest Rates Rise

New home sales are beginning to slide as rising rates clamp down on the housing market euphoria. The Census Bureau reported February new home sales at a seasonally adjusted annual rate (SAAR) of 772,000 units. That's a 2 percent slide from January and down 6.2 percent from last year. The unadjusted February sales estimate shows 65,000 new homes sold. That translates to a 7 percent slide year-over-year. The median price of a new home came in at $400,600. The average price posted at $511,000, a new record high for the series. It's interesting to note [...]

Collateral Damage Coming to the North Texas Housing Market

Collateral damage in the North Texas housing market is beginning to reveal itself. Inflation is at a fresh 40-year high. Homes have never been more expensive, and interest rates are on the rise. Official consumer price inflation just printed at an annual pace of 7.9 percent. This is with many of the official CPI metrics understating actual inflation. This is also before the spike in global energy markets with the tragedy unfolding in Ukraine. While many housing industry pundits were clinging to the slight drop in mortgage rates last week, that blip is now a [...]

New Home Sales Fall as Rising Rates Temper Demand

New home sales fell in January to a seasonally adjusted annual rate (SAAR) of 801,000 units. The previous three months were revised higher. Census Bureau estimates put new home sales 4.5 percent below the revised December numbers. New home sales were 19.3 percent lower than January of last year. The median price of a new home contracted in January was $423,300. The average sales price of a new home posted at $496,900. That was a new all-time high. Median and average new home prices both hit new record highs in North Texas in January. On [...]

North Texas Housing Market Correction Taking Shape

A housing market correction is coming to North Texas. Don't say you weren't warned. The data points have been piling up for months. The only question remaining is how this all plays out, or more specifically how much pain the Fed is willing to tolerate. Inflation Rages Today's headline print for CPI inflation came in at a red-hot 7.5%. Despite many experts' assumptions that inflation would be moderating, core inflation has actually been increasing in each of the last three month's readings from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Jerome Powell and the FOMC decided to [...]

First Phase of Cole Ranch Taking Shape in Denton

The first phase of the Cole Ranch development is taking shape in the southwest side of Denton. Hillwood Communities has been working on the project that will turn the former Hunter Ranch and Cole Rach in to a huge 3200-acre master-planned development with roughly 6000 homes. The initial plat of phase I of the project shows over 600 homes on tap. Those homes should be arriving as available inventory in early 2024. "Preliminary plans call for 663 single family lots, 48 townhome lots, 1 multifamily lot, 7 mixed-use regional lots, and 1 light industrial lot. [...]

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