Texas Real Estate News: Home Sales Hit Historic Highs With Demand, Prices Remaining Lofty and Inventory Low

“In the fall, Texas Realtors usually start to catch their breath as the summer selling season draws to a close, but not this year,” said Shad Bogany, chairman of the Texas Association of Realtors. “Demand for Texas homes remains strong, keeping buyers and sellers in the market, and Texas Realtors, busy.”

We couldn’t have said it better ourselves, Shad. It’s true — while spring and summer are typically the more brisk seasons for selling homes, the phones are still ringing off the hook for a lot of North Texas Realtors. Why? Because of job growth bringing in so many new households, with sales volume in the third quarter of 2013 matching that of the second quarter, and incredibly low inventory according to the third quarter edition of the Texas Quarterly Housing Report released today by the Texas Association of Realtors.

“The inventory of homes in Texas is at historically low levels,” said Jim Gaines, PhD., an economist with the Real Estate Center at Texas A&M University (left). “To have only 4 months of inventory in a market as large as Texas is remarkable. Of the 47 markets included in the report, 10 have less than 3 months of inventory and that includes several large markets, such as Austin and Dallas.”

Less than three months of inventory, people! Just jaw-dropping, isn’t it? We just can’t build them fast enough. Not only that, but housing prices are growing, too, increasing during the third quarter of 2013 as it did in the second. Median home prices increased 10 percent year-over-year to $177,100. Average prices increased 11.06 percent YOY, too, to $230,474.

Gaines continued, “Sales volume in Texas had been increasing for some time, but the price increases have been constrained by foreclosures and other distressed sales. Now, we’ve seen more than a year-and-a-half of price increases that outpace the average rate of appreciation in Texas, which is around 4.5 percent per year. This quarter’s annual double-digit price increase was more than twice that pace. Taken together, it’s clear that high demand for Texas homes is translating into higher prices for home sellers.”

The Texas Quarterly Housing Report also stated that 80,105 single-family homes were sold in Texas in the third quarter of 2013, which is 18.97 percent more than Q3 2012 and “the highest volume of homes sold in Texas since the Texas Association of Realtors began issuing the report in 2009.”

Sure, these reports show statewide trends, but we’re hearing a lot of the same from Dallas-area Realtors. What’s your report from Q3?