The North Texas housing market is so hot that even a slight cooldown is hard to detect, but it’s good to see signs that supply is at least catching up with demand after years of lagging far behind.
Homes are still moving: Real estate reporter Nick Wootton said earlier this month that the Dallas-Fort Worth area “ranked second in the nation for home sales and listings last month, behind only New York City, as the spring buying and selling season heats up.”
And prices are still rising, Wootton wrote.
But there is some good news: National prices rose 6.5% year over year in March, with a more modest 3.6% increase in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. Supply is growing in the region, and more homes are coming on the market. “There were 24,128 active listings in the D-FW metro area last month, up nearly 46% year over year,” Wooten reported May 15, citing data from the Texas Center for Real Estate Research at Texas A&M University.
There’s a lot we can infer from this data. The region is growing at a rapid pace, putting tremendous pressure on prices at a time when inflation and high interest rates are making it difficult to buy a home.
But the market is starting to become more balanced. Wooten reported that the area had 3.2 months of housing inventory in April. We’re not quite there yet, as six months is a sign of a balanced market. But we’re moving in the right direction from less than a month’s supply in January 2022.
North Texas cannot afford to let housing prices get out of control. Affordable housing is one of our greatest competitive advantages, and taking that away from the Dallas-Fort Worth region makes it much harder to attract the businesses that help build our prosperity.
Thankfully, ground is recovering. We expect prices to stabilize or even fall soon. Working families need to envision a future where they can get a mortgage to build assets for the future.
With prices pacing, that goal is becoming harder to reach. As we see supply lines expanding, it’s comforting to know we’re back in business to ensure people of all income levels have a place to call home.
This is the traditional identity of this region, and it should be the North Star for generations to come.
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