Despite dramatically higher mortgage rates than in the previous few years, North Texas continued to see only moderate year-over-year declines in home sales and prices in June.
The region recorded 8,750 single-family home sales in June, a decline of 4% from June 2022, according to a new report by North Texas Real Estate Information Systems and the Texas Real Estate Research Center at Texas A&M University. The report includes sales of existing and new homes through the multiple listing services used by real estate agents and does not include new homes sold directly by builders.
Just over 18,000 homes were on the market in June in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. Inventory remains low at 2.5 months of supply, far below levels that would be considered balanced between buyers and sellers.
Homes on average sold after 41 days on the market and at 97.6% of the list price.
“I’m happy that buyers have a certain degree of negotiability and more leverage shifted a little back toward them in the transaction than we had a year ago,” said Matt Haistings, a real estate agent in Plano for Compass.
While the number of active listings increased 16% over the last year as homes sit on the market longer, new listings dropped 22%. Many would-be home sellers are not willing to give up low mortgage rates on their current homes.
“There’s low inventory, and for a lot of people in the entry-level and middle market — the supply situation is really more like a month of supply of move-in-ready, quality homes,” Haistings said. “And so, they are clamoring to get something.”
The median single-family home price clocked in at $415,000, down 5% from June 2022. After falling about 13% from the peak of $435,000 in May and June 2022 to $380,000 in January, prices have since risen about 9%. But that only hits a sliver of the gains local prices have seen over the past three years, with the median still up 53% from the start of 2020.
Texas A&M economists expect prices this year to stay largely flat or slightly below last year’s prices.
“A lot of buyers that I talk to are holding out,” Haistings said. “I think it’s wishful thinking, but they’re holding out for like a big drop in prices or a big drop in interest rates, and I’m not sure we see either of those things in 2023.”
Of the four major Dallas-Fort Worth counties, Collin County homes sold for the highest price at a median of $555,000. Collin and Tarrant County homes saw the biggest price decreases of those counties, and Dallas and Tarrant saw the largest price declines.
The average rate for a 30-year, fixed-rate mortgage has fluctuated between 6% and almost 7% throughout this year after jumping up from 2021′s record low of less than 3%, according to Freddie Mac.
Jason Dickson, owner of North Texas-based Nuwave Lending, said buyers are more comfortable with mortgage-rate increases than they were when the rates started hiking upward last year.
“A year later, all of those people that held off there, they’ve either already purchased or they’re in a frenzy to purchase because they realize, rates have not come down, but prices continue to climb,” for in-demand, non-investor homes in good school districts and neighborhoods, Dickson said. “I’m seeing strong demand and still multiple offers.”
