The tight housing supply in Dallas-Fort Worth is loosening slightly as more homes hit the North Texas market in April.
The number of active listings in the D-FW metroplex was 24,128 last month, up nearly 46% from a year earlier, according to data from the Texas Real Estate Research Center at Texas A&M University, North Texas Real Estate Information Services and the MetroTex Association of Realtors.
Dallas County had more than 5,100 active listings as the region entered the busiest season for buying and selling. That’s an increase of 56.7% from last April.
Listings were also up nearly 70% in Collin County and just shy of 41% in Tarrant County.
The trends continue from March. There were 22,449 active listings in North Texas then, up 34.8% from the previous year.
D-FW had 3.2 months of housing inventory in April. That’s approaching pre-COVID pandemic levels, said Ted Wilson, principal of Dallas-based Residential Strategies, a market research company focused on Texas’ new home industry.
A six-month inventory is considered balanced. Getting inventory back towards a more normal level is good for the market, Wilson said.
“You have to look at it in relative terms because the inventory was so tight,” he said. “It’s going to take a little longer to sell your house, but it gives you more inventory and it also kind of reduces some of the inflationary pressure we’ve been seeing on that housing stock out there.”
The wave of properties hitting the market comes as prices ticked slightly upward and sales numbers increased.
The median price of a D-FW home was $405,000, up 1.5% from last April. There were nearly 8,700 closed sales in the metroplex, up 8.1% from the year prior. Homes were on the market 80 days in April, four days fewer than last year.
Dallas County saw its median price hit $380,000, up 5.9% from last April. More than 2,000 sales were closed last month, up more than 9% year-over-year.
It’s unclear if those sales trends will hold as mortgage rates have ticked above 7%. The average 30-year U.S. mortgage rate for the week ending May 9 was 7.09%. Rates decreased last week for the first time since March.
The Federal Reserve has not yet delivered on expected 2024 rate cuts. Still, a strong majority of economists polled by Reuters said they expect at least two cuts this year starting in September.
Ashley Gentry, president of MetroTex, said April’s numbers show a level of acceptance with interest rates and some pent-up demand by buyers.
“We are definitely becoming more balanced, and buyers have more options,” she said. “It is still what we would constitute as a seller’s market in most pockets of D-FW.”
