House Hunting? There's A Lot Less to Choose From
The COVID-19 pandemic has hammered home sales listings and shut down open houses across North Texas.
Many sellers who had planned to put a “For Sale” sign in their yards this spring have opted to sit out what is normally the hottest time of the year for housing.
The decline in listings is easy to see in March’s Dallas-Fort Worth housing numbers. For all of North Texas, the number of single-family houses listed for sale with real estate agents is down 10%. There are 30% fewer condominium and townhouse listings than a year ago.
Some counties are seeing tighter supply.
Collin County home sales lists are almost 28% behind where they were in March 2019, according to the MetroTex Association of Realtors. And in Denton County, listings are down almost 25% year-over-year. Home sales inventory is more than 16% lower in Dallas County and is off from March 2019 levels by more than 10% in Ellis and Kaufman counties, according to the MetroTex Realtors Group.
Online home sales firm Zillow reports that the number of new house sales listings in early April in the D-FW area was about 17% less than a year ago. Home sales were still rising in March from a year ago in most North Texas counties, with the greatest annual gains in Kaufman County, up 18.7%. March sales in Rockwall County were down by more than 10% from a year earlier. Prices were higher compared with March 2019 in all of the D-FW counties included in the survey. The greatest annual gain was Ellis County’s 7.7% increase.
Most of March’s home sales were started before the coronavirus pandemic hit. So analysts are warning that the true impact of the infection and shelter-in-place orders won’t be felt for several months. The D-FW area had a relatively tight home inventory before the COVID-19 spread. The supply of houses for sale in the area is getting even tighter now...
