DFW Relocation

Denton County Housing Bubble Begins To Pop

Denton County's pandemic-induced housing bubble is finally beginning to pop. The summer selling season has been met with rampant price chopping. Sellers are hitting the market and finding some big air pockets. My what a difference a few months can make! Home inventory continues to rise off the lows earlier this year. That has caught a number of home sellers and agents completely off guard. It shouldn't have. As I have been detailing for months, this shift and the coming correction were baked in the cake. What's amazing is that so many "experts" continue to [...]

New Home Sales Plunge with Affordability Concerns

New home sales took a serious nosedive in April. The Census Bureau reported new home sales for April at a seasonally adjusted annual rate (SAAR) of 591,000. That was way below consensus estimates and a 16.6 percent slide from the March figure.  New home sales were down 26.9 percent from April of last year. Previous months' estimates were also revised lower. The following two charts help explain why the consensus has been oblivious to what's really happening. Something was bound to give, and it finally did. In layman's terms, new homes are no longer affordable [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

New Home Sales Rise in December, But Headwinds Mounting

New home sales were a bit better than expected in December. The Census Bureau reported new home sales at a seasonally adjusted annual rate (SAAR) of 811,000 units. Previous months were revised lower. The median price of new home came in at $377,700. The average price of new construction contracted in December was $457,300. New home sales are still suffering from supply constraints. Completed inventory remains very low while the number of units technically for sale remains very high. Looking at unadjusted numbers out of the 408,000 homes "for sale" at the end of December [...]

North Texas Real Estate Shatters Records, Before The Fed Pulls the Rug

North Texas real estate shattered a number of records as we closed out the year. December saw record home prices in December as the Federal Reserve continued to pump asset prices. Available home inventory in the Dallas-Fort Worth area dipped to new record lows. Investors, speculators and other home buyers were busy fighting over the dwindling pool of properties available for for sale. The number of homes for sale in North Texas slipped to roughly 11,400 in December. There would be about 30,000 homes for sale in the DFW area under normal conditions. At the [...]

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