Dallas-Area Home Prices Up Just 2.7% in Latest Case-Shiller Report
Dallas-area home prices inched up 2.7% from a year ago in the latest nationwide comparison.
Dallas' year-over-year home price gain was the lowest appreciation in seven years in the Standard & Poor's CoreLogic Case-Shiller U.S. National Home Price Index. Nationwide prices were up 3.5% in April compared with the same month in 2018.
The trend toward more moderate home price increases in Dallas and nationwide began last year.
"Home price gains continued in a trend of broad-based moderation," S&P's Philip Murphy said in the new report. "Year-over-year price gains remain positive in most cities, though at diminishing rates of change. "Perhaps the trend for the moment is toward normalization around the real long-run average annual price increase."
The biggest price increases in April were in Las Vegas, up 7.1% from a year ago, and Phoenix, where prices were 6% higher. None of the 20 major U.S. markets Case-Shiller tracks had the double-digit percentage home price rises that have been common in the last few years. In Seattle, which has seen an explosion of housing costs in the last few years, home prices were unchanged from a year ago, according to Case-Shiller. A year ago, Seattle home values were rising at a 13% annual rate.
"The housing market has continued to normalize throughout the spring, finding more balance between buyers and sellers and slowing to a pace of growth much more in line with historic norms," Zillow economist Matthew Speakman said in a statement. "Despite persistently low mortgage interest rates, affordability is top of mind for many buyers strained by prices that have grown much faster than incomes over the past several years and an ongoing dearth of supply that is keeping competition high.
"This slowdown has been widely expected for some time and is likely to give many would-be buyers some much-needed breathing room," he said. "Prices will continue to grow, just not at the unsustainable rates of the past several years..."
