Is Your Community Up or Down?
This year's lower mortgage rates haven't boosted home sales in all Dallas-area neighborhoods.
In the first half of 2019, sales were down from a year ago in half of the residential districts The Dallas Morning News tracks. For the entire area, the number of houses sold by real estate agents dropped 1% from the first half of 2018, according to data from the Real Estate Center at Texas A&M University and North Texas Real Estate Information Systems.
The dip in Dallas-area home sales isn't a surprise. Several years of big price increases have created an affordability problem for many potential buyers that the lower home finance rates don't offset. "Dallas is still a very affordable housing market compared with the rest of the country, but not compared to what we are used to," said James Gaines, chief economist for the Real Estate Center. "Ultimately, at the price levels we are looking at, we are going to have to get incomes up to get homebuying activity up." Some of the biggest sales declines this year are in areas with more expensive homes, including Oak Lawn, Sunnyvale, Far North Dallas and Westlake-Trophy Club. And sales were even down in some of the popular neighborhoods in Frisco, Plano and McKinney.
There were double-digit home sales gains in a few areas offering larger inventories of moderate-priced housing, including Carrollton, Farmers Branch, Bedford and southeast Dallas.
"It's real spotty," Gaines said. "One neighborhood does great and other neighborhoods are really slacking off. "A shortage of inventory is especially acute in the lower price ranges."
Median home sales prices fell in 10 of the Dallas-area districts included in the survey. Some of the biggest median home sales price declines this year from 2018 levels were in pricier neighborhoods in Coppell, North Dallas and Colleyville.
Overall, Dallas-area prices averaged 4% higher year-over-year in the 45 areas The News looked at. Some of the biggest home sales price hikes were in affordable neighborhoods in southern Dallas County. Prices are up 13% in southeast Dallas, 12% in Duncanville and 10% in southern Dallas so far this year. "In most areas prices are still rising but less than they were a couple of years ago," Gaines said.
That's caused consternation for some home sellers who haven't gotten the message that the big run-up in North Texas home prices is slowing. "The variation in price and days on market has caused a lot of confusion and sometimes frustration for sellers who hear that the market is hot and things are selling fast, but in their neighborhood it is not the case," said Mark McDonough, president of Better Homes and Gardens Winans Real Estate. "D-FW is like a patchwork quilt when it comes to variations and differences neighborhood by neighborhood.
"The higher-priced areas are certainly sitting longer with prices that have balanced quite a bit," he said. "The average-priced neighborhoods still have a lot of pocket-by-pocket variation depending on schools, location, etc."
The cooling of Dallas' housing market this year follows a long stretch of home sales and price gains. In 2018, North Texas real estate agents sold more than 104,000 houses through their multiple listing service — just 1% shy of a record number. Median home sales prices in the area were a record $277,000 in June. Paige Shipp, who heads the Dallas office for housing analyst Metrostudy Inc., said the changes in the existing home market are welcome. "We went from being overheated — which wasn't sustainable — to where the market is more stabilized," Shipp said. "We have seen some price reductions. "That was from sellers thinking they would be able to sell for more than their neighbors did," she said. "The housing market is still very, very healthy..."
