DFW Home Prices

Lower Mortgage Rates Fuel February Rebound In Denton County Real Estate Market

Lower mortgage interest rates and a sharp rebound in the stock market helped fuel a rebound in the Denton County real estate market in February. Closed home sales declined 4 percent year-over-year, improving from poor January figures. Average home prices in Denton County rose 2.4 percent compared to February of last year. Pending home sales for February actually moved into positive territory rising 6 percent for the month. The increase in contract signings indicates that buyers were enticed by dramatically higher inventory levels and the improvement in mortgage interest rates. New home sales in particular, [...]

Shadow Bank Lending, Rising Debt To Income Ratios Fueling Denton County Home Price Growth

Shadow banks, or nonbanks as they are often called, continue to dominate the mortgage space in the real estate echo bubble. This is the case in Denton County Texas and all across the country. Since 2008 the share of mortgage originations by nonbanks has more than doubled, rising from 24% in 2008 to 54% in 0217. The share of mortgages issued by traditional large banks continue to decline. As home prices rose throughout Denton County, the quality of the mortgages originated during this boom began deteriorating. Last year the deterioration in mortgage quality was pronounced. [...]

Case-Shiller: Dallas Home Prices Continue To Cool In December

The S&P/Case-Shiller home prices indices for December showed that Dallas home prices continued to cool in December. While the national index for home prices was 4.7 percent higher, Dallas trailed at an annual growth rate of 3.9 percent. The index for Dallas home prices was essentially flat for the sixth consecutive month. Among the major cities in the 20-city index, Las Vegas, Phoenix and Atlanta showed the highest yearly gains in December, with increases of 11.4%, 8.0% and 5.9% respectively. San Diego and DC showed the smallest increases, registering price gains of 2.3% and 2.7%. [...]

Denton County Home Sales Fall Out Of The Gate In 2019

Denton County home sales remained in their downward trend as we started 2019. NTREIS figures show that sales of Denton County homes fell 13 percent from the same time last year. Pending sales, a more forward looking indicator, did show a slight improvement, though not enough to pull the index into positive territory. Pending home sales in the Denton County area were down 6 percent compared to January 2018. The recent plunge in mortgage rates back to 1-year lows has helped to cushion the fall in an otherwise stagnating housing market. DFW home sales fell [...]

High-Income Renter Households Growing Faster In DFW

High-income households choosing to rent in the DFW area are growing faster than owner-occupied households. This is the news from a RentCafe picture of wealthy renter households in top U.S. cities. According to RentCafe, households making more than $150,000 have seen a 175 percent increase in renter-household growth between 2007 and 2017, comprising roughly 1.35 million households. Shifts in buyer mentality, housing availability, changing demographics and other factors are at play. It doesn't help that Federal Reserve policy has grossly distorted the U.S. housing market in many ways, causing affordable inventory shortages in many markets. [...]

Caveman Powell Looking To Levitate Stock, Housing Bubbles

Yesterday the Federal Reserve yelped like a whipped puppy as Jerome Powell turned into the latest iteration of his market-dependent Bernanke/Yellen/Greenspan predecessors. If you remember, Mr. Powell was here in the DFW area back in November playing up the fabulous state of the U.S economy and the Fed's wonderful policies. At the time expectations were that the Fed would be raising the Federal Funds rate four more times this year with a balance sheet reduction schedule that was supposedly on "autopilot" to the tune of $50 billion per month rolling off. Flash forward one quarter [...]

Denton TX Mortgage Rates Lowest In 9 Months

The benchmark 30-year mortgage interest rate dipped to 4.45 percent in the latest Freddie Mac weekly survey. That's the lowest level for mortgage interest rates that Denton Texas home buyers have seen in since last March. Not surprisingly, mortgage purchase applications have picked up slightly to start 2019. That's good news because purchase applications were trending lower for much of the fourth quarter of 2018 It remains to be seen whether the dip in interest rates will be enough to spark area home sales into the green. While mortgage rates are the lowest we've seen [...]

Denton County Home Sales Continued Sliding In December

Denton County home sales continued their slide in December as the Dallas-Fort Worth real estate market saw a 5th consecutive month of year-over-year declining sales activity. Denton County experienced an 11 percent decline in closed home sales along with a corresponding 11 percent decline in pending home sales activity. The drop in forward-looking contract activity suggests that a spring housing rebound may be a tough proposition. Home prices were still rising in many DFW submarkets in December, including Denton Texas where the average price of a home rose 11 percent to $274,012. Looking at a [...]

Hyper-Financialized DFW Housing Market Will Get Worse

The National Association of Realtors reported pending home sales for November slid 7.7 percent compared to a year ago. Of course the headline you probably saw in the media was the 0.7 percent drop compared to October's decline in contract signings. With the stock market poised to finish one of the worst Decembers in recent memory, you can rest assured the hyper-financialized Dallas-Fort Worth housing market is going to get worse before it fully recovers. Chief economist, Lawrence Yun, attempted to diffuse concerns about sliding sales numbers in November in NAR's latest press release, but [...]

Dallas Fort Worth Real Estate Staring At Potential Bear Market

The Dallas-Fort Worth real estate market is looking at a bear of a problem. After the worst Christmas-Eve trading session in history for U.S. stock markets, time is running out for the wise guys on Wall Street to save indices from entering bear market territory. Looking at home prices and sales volumes in the DFW area, it would seem things are still running along fairly normally; however, it could be a mistake to assume the recent softness in home sales is just a blip in an otherwise stabilizing market. We could easily see a rally into [...]

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