Economy

Denton County Real Estate Market Running Out of Steam

Denton County real estate was running out of steam in September. New cycle highs for mortgage rates and more typical seasonality took a bite out of demand. Sales volume dropped 9 percent compared to the same month a year ago. Pending contract activity fell by a similar amount. Median and average home prices are now lower than where they stood in April. Median prices are still $40,000 lower than where they topped out in the frenzy of 2022. New home builders continued to pull in an outsized portion of sales in September. They are doing [...]

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 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 [...]

Oblivion Revisited: Jerome Powell Lays More Cover For The Banking System

In a Q&A session and virtual chat covering monetary policy and the U.S. economy Jerome Powell floated another laughable statement regarding the strength and soundness of the U.S. financial system. Just like his predecessors before him, Powell is apparently willing to feed the financial media whatever it wants to hear, even it has no affiliation with the truth. Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell said the Fed will maintain the current course of printing money like there's no tomorrow until it sees substantial progress towards its goals of 2 percent inflation and maximum employment. It is [...]

New Home Sales Highest Since 2006

New home sales for August came in at a seasonally adjusted annual rate (SAAR) of 1,011,000 units. This was above expectations depending on who you were asking. The August figures from Census put U.S. new home sales up 4.8 percent from July, and up a whopping 43.2 percent from August 2019. New home sales were at the highest levels since 2006. Previous months were also revised higher. The median price of a new home in August was $312,800. The average price came in at $369,000. Both figures are lower than prices for July and down [...]

NAR: Existing Home Sales Rise Double Digits

The National Association of Realtors reported existing home sales for August at a seasonally adjusted annual rate (SAAR) of 6,000,000 units. That was up 2.4 percent from July numbers and a 10.5 percent increase from August of last year. According to NAR the median price of an existing home was $310,600 in August.  That's an increase of 11.4 percent from August 2019. The average price of an existing home jumped 8.8 percent from last year to $342,500. August was the 102nd straight month of year-over-year home price gains. Home price inflation is running well ahead [...]

North Texas Real Estate Market Partying Like It’s 1999

The North Texas real estate market continued to ramp higher in August. Median home prices in Denton County jumped 6.3 percent last month, with average prices rising 7.4 percent compared to a year ago. Denton County home sales increased 10 percent, while pending sales for Denton County homes shot 33 percent. Home buyers are still riding that wave of liquidity, and who can blame them. Mortgage rates just hit a new record low in the latest weekly survey, with the rate on the 30-year fixed dropping to 2.86 percent. Those low rates helped push North [...]

Denton Texas Employment Stalls With Fading Govt Stimulus

Denton Texas employment stalled in July as stimulus benefits for many Americans came to an end. While Denton and Denton County showed slight increases in employment from June levels, North Texas as a whole actually lost jobs during the month. The Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington MSA region saw unadjusted nonfarm employment fall by 12,900 jobs from June levels. Employment for the North Texas region was down by 150,500 jobs compared to July 2019. The latest numbers from the Texas Workforce Commission in July are a stark reminder that the real economy has not fully recovered, even if [...]

Denton TX Home Prices Go Parabolic With Fed Liquidity

2020 is going to be memorable for a number of reasons, and the housing market is certainly one of them. With the Federal Reserve injecting $trillions in Covid stimulus to prop up the flailing U.S. economy, Denton Texas home prices managed to completely detach from traditional fundamentals in July. Denton TX home prices skyrocketed 14.8 percent to an average price of $316,601 last month, easily shattering the all-time record. 3647 fewer people had jobs in Denton according to the latest employment report, but apparently it didn't matter. 2020 is all about central bank liquidity and [...]

Denton Texas Employment Rebounds, But More Assistance Needed

Denton Texas employment levels continued to rebound in June, but it is obvious more state and federal assistance will be needed to weather the Covid-related job losses. Yesterday Texas reported the 3rd consecutive day of triple digit fatalities and a record high single day death toll of 174 people. Denton County saw its largest one day spike in coronavirus cases during the pandemic. The recent spike in Covid cases and fatalities in the state of Texas has put Texas' economic reopening on hold. The start of the new school year is still a moving target [...]

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