Skirting the I-Word: Dallas, Denver Home Prices Up, High, Is Legalizing Marijuana Next?

Rocky Mountain High takes on a whole new meaning as Dallas and Denver continue to lead the nation as the most vibrant real estate markets, according to the venerable Standard & Poors Case-Shiller Home Price Index that came out Tuesday. .

Here, too, is why more real estate investors are swooping in to Dallas to buy up properties: our home values are up, so much, in fact, that we have now surpassed the heights we attained at the peak of the bubble back in 2006. That’s right: our real estate values have climbed higher than we thought they could.

Dallas area home prices rose by an unprecedented 9 percent in one year. That was for August sales, of course; there is a month and a half delay in gathering and reporting all those sales, then deciphering the stats. And remember Case Shiller does not include new home sales so 9% could actually be conservative. New home construction continues to be in such high demand, there is no softening of prices.

That leaves Dallas home prices at 5% above their pre-recession levels. And August’s year-over-year percentage price increase for Dallas was the highest in the history of Case Shiller. According to David Blitzer, Dallas and Denver both set new real estate highs, and we don’t even have mountains or marijuana!

But we may all have to start toking if my nagging fear takes hold: inflation! That’s what I fear when I Read about our steadily climbing values. Kneejerk reaction is yes, great, our home is worth more. I feel rich!

Then: DCAD will be catching on, upping the old property taxes next. Ugh. Then won’t it be nice to sell my home for a nice juicy profit? Sure, but then I’ll pay capital gains tax and have to buy another home that may be smaller and less desirable than my current home, for more money!

Here is the 20-city Case-Shiller report. As you can see, some cities are enjoying some healthy upward valuations, especially Detroit and of course, California cities.

Nationwide home prices rose by 12.8 percent from August 2012 levels, according to Case-Shiller. Ha ha ha: what happens in Vegas apparently stays UP in Vegas: but Vegas values are still down 47.1 percent from freaky-peak levels. San Francisco, no stunner, was up 25.4%. I read somewhere that the proliferation of millionaires in the Bay area was leading to a class of ridiculously wealthy individuals who spend life being shuttled from their employment campus (like Facebook) to palatial $20 plus million dollar homes in Palo Alto. San Francisco is quickly becoming a city where anyone earning less than $100K cannot afford to live.

Blitzer said that 13 of the 20 cities Case-Shiller tracks had double-digit increase in home prices this August. Like I said, how long will it be before we start hearing about the “i-word”: inflation?