Mortgage Rates

Mortgage rates for Texas homebuyers

Denton County Home Sales See Big September Decline

Denton County home sales saw a big September decline as Dallas-Fort Worth experienced the sharpest home sales drop in seven years according to the latest NTREIS data. The latest press release on September home sales show a statistically estimated 7 percent drop in total single-family home sales in North Texas during the month of September. Pending sales show to be down 6% year-over-year. The median price of a North Texas single-family home was $251,000 in September, a gain of 4%. The average price of a single-family home stood at $304,331, an increase of 6%. Single-family [...]

New Home Sales Rise 3.5%, Up 12.7% Year-Over Year

The Census Bureau reported new home sales for August at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 629,000 units. This was in line with expectations, but previous months were revised downward. The August numbers for new home sales indicated a month-over-month increase of 3.5% and a 12.7% increase above August of last year, a relatively easy comparison. Sales of new homes are up 6.9% year-to-date through August when compared to the same period last year. The median price of a new home contracted in August was $320,200, down about $8,000 from last month, but higher than [...]

Existing Home Sales Soften As New Home Permits Stall

Today the National Association of Realtors reported that existing home sales for August came in flat from last month, actually down about 1.5% from this time last year. The median price of an existing home sold in the U.S. during the month of August posted at $264,800, a rise of 4.6 percent year-over-year and the 78th consecutive month of year-over-year price gains. According to NAR chief economist, Lawrence Yun, "homes continue to fly off the shelves" with most properties selling within a month. The supply of existing homes in the United States rose to 4.3 [...]

10 Years After The Housing Crash, Dallas-Fort Worth Experiencing Consequences Of Policy Failures

10 years after the housing crash and the Great Recession that nearly brought the world economy to its knees, the adults in the room are still pretending that everything is normal. If you read the Dallas Morning News and the spin of many professional economists, the DFW real estate market has emerged from the wreckage 10 years ago relatively unscathed. With DFW home prices at record highs, most housing pundits are eager to suggest everything is awesome. Apparently the recent rise in home inventories is just blip in an otherwise normalization of the formerly red [...]

Denton County Home Sales Slide 7% In August

Denton County home sales continued to stagnate in August, sliding 7 percent from the same time last year. Denton area home sales declined a bit more than the DFW area as a whole during August,  likely due to the higher average price points in Denton County. The average price of a Denton County home in August posted at $362,872, almost $50,000 higher than the greater DFW area. Pending sales for August are poised to be down double digits in Denton County, even while inventory creeps higher. With home buyers are looking for affordable housing options, [...]

New Home Builders Clipped By Weak Order Growth

New home builders had a relatively rough week with several major publicly-traded builders experiencing some nasty haircuts in their stock prices. With the exception of DR Horton, it wasn't a good week for home builder stocks. While Facebook and Twitter were seeing record drops in their share prices, new home builders were also experiencing a hangover from weak growth in new home orders. The Dow Jones Home Construction Index has trended lower for most of the year, down almost 18 percent year-to-date. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to understand why the index peaked just [...]

New Home Sales Miss Expectations In June Despite Lower Prices

The Census Bureau reported new home sales for June at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 631,000. This was below expectations, and a 5.3 percent decline from May. The previous three months were also revised lower. Compared to last June, new home sales were up a modest 2.4%. Surprisingly, the decline in new construction sales came despite lower median and average prices for new homes in June. The median price of $302,100 was $13,100 less than last year. The average price of $363,300 was $7300 lower. It would appear that new home buyers are suffering [...]

Dallas Morning News Real Estate Desk Still Missing The Boat

Dallas Morning News' real estate editor, Steve Brown, seems to be waking up to the fact that the DFW real estate market is cooling. He's still off the mark when it comes to the recent peak in DFW home sales, but at least he acknowledged the sales decline last month.  DFW home sales fell for the month of June. See, that wasn't so hard. After successive years of abnormal price growth, the DFW area saw a reported 3 percent decline in home sales in June. I say "reported", because as I detailed in a previous [...]

Denton Home Sales Soar In June As DFW Sales Swoon

DFW home sales fell in June with the diminishing supply of affordable homes. Home prices are still rising in many DFW submarkets, but sales are cooling in the more expensive submarkets. NTREIS stats reflect a sales decline of roughly 3-4 percent in June in the Dallas-Fort Worth area compared to the same month last year. The same held true in Denton County where sales also fell 3-4% compared to last year. The city of Denton bucked the trend in June with a 30 percent sales gain in June. How? In a word, it was all [...]

All Roads Still Point Toward Yield Curve Inversion

With the Federal Reserve's balance sheet normalization process set to kick into a higher gear next month, all roads still point toward a yield curve inversion. While govt officials and the Fed's pie-in-the-sky economists continue to was about a robust economy with unemployment levels hovering near cycle lows, there are some widening cracks appearing in the global QE Ponzi scheme. Yesterday the Fed found some "widespread and critical deficiencies" in Deutsche Bank's capital planning controls. You don't say! The stock of Germany's largest bank, a toxic time bomb of opaque derivatives, continues to plumb news [...]

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