North Texas Home Market Shrugs Off Pandemic With Record Sales and Prices
Home sales in North Texas exploded in July, rising 25% from a year ago to the largest ever single-month sales total. It was the second month in a row that area home purchases bounced back from the declines in April and May at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. July’s sales spike follows a 16% annual increase in June.
The bull housing market comes at a time when thousands of Texans have lost their jobs due to the pandemic, and many renters are worried about where next month’s rent money will come from. Record low mortgage rates that make home loan payments lower fueled the surge in buying.
The gain for July was enough to boost the area’s total sales for the first seven months of the year by 3% from the same period in 2019, according to data from the Real Estate Center at Texas A&M University and North Texas Real Estate Information Systems. The rise in July sales was expected, but the size of the gain was well ahead of most analysts’ expectations.
“The continued strength of the resale home market in D-FW is surprising,” said Paige Shipp, vice president of market research at CDCG Asset Management. “We anticipated pent-up demand as we exited the lockdown, but the latest data proves it is more than just a delay in spring selling season.”
North Texas median home prices were up 9% — the largest such annual increase in more than a year. “The considerable increase tells me that not only are buyers paying more, but they are also buying more expensive homes,” Shipp said. “Frankly, a 9% increase in median price is shocking.”
The $294,200 median sales price in July was a record high for North Texas.
Chris Kelly, CEO of Dallas’ Ebby Halliday Realtors, said his firm’s dollar volume of home sales was up 45% from July 2019. “We sold almost a billion dollars in July alone,” Kelly said. “We are hearing of an increasing frequency of multiple offers in certain price points and markets.”
Real estate agents say buyers are everyone from first-timers looking to get out of rentals to corporate transferees coming into the Dallas-Fort Worth area.
Reuben D’Souza just put his new North Dallas home on the market and says he’s expecting a quick sale. The five-bedroom, 4,900-square-foot Royal Lane house is listed for sale for $1.495 million. “The interest rates are so low and the Dallas market is so hot with a lot of companies moving in,” said D’Souza, who is a local tech company exec. “I think there is big demand in Dallas for luxury homes.” D’Souza said he built the house to sell, and it’s move-in ready...
