State of the State of the DFW Real Estate Market

We have had a steady stream of positive real estate news reports from everywhere the last couple weeks. And despite our fling with West Nile, Dallas is like the shinest Real Estate ornament in the box! The latest S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price Indices show Dallas as the only Texas city on the index showing a 3.68 percent increase in home prices from June 2011 to June 2012.

Did you get that? Prices are up, not just sales.

The numbers are almost astonishing. According to NTREIS, Park Cities sales are up 55 percent from last August, North Dallas is up 35 percent, and Trophy Club-Westlake is hitting it out of the ballpark with sales up 86 percent.

Nationally, S&P says prices rose 6.9 percent in second quarter 2012, the strongest quarter-over-quarter gain since the quarterly index was birthed in 1987.

And we haven’t said this in a long time: home prices also improved month-over-month in all 20 cities tracked by Case-Shiller. I’ll bet Bob Shiller needs smelling salts.

Prices are up, and so are existing home sales in North Texas. The North Texas Real Estate Information Systems tells us North Texas had an 18 percent increase in pre-owned home sales for the month of August.

Those 7,986 single-family home sales are the largest number of single-month sales since before the recession. Median sales prices also rose in August, up a whopping 8% in some areas over the same month last year.

This may have something to do with it: we only have a 5.3-month supply of available homes to sell,  the shortest inventory in over a decade.

And Dallas-area residents who are not moving are building equity in their homes.

Second quarter 2012, only 10.9 percent of Dallas-area residents with a mortgage owed more than their house is worth, this from CoreLogic Inc. That’s less than half the national rate of 22.3 percent of homeowners with a loan who were underwater with their mortgage in the second quarter.

That’s so much better than 2009, when 30 percent of local homeowners with a mortgage were upside down. We’ve got the ingredients: surging prices, multiple offers, lower levels of inventory, and declining REO sale shares.

Oh yes, we also have jobs.