Dallas Area Home Prices Now 6 Percent Higher Than They Were in the Peak Before the Recession

I guess you can thank no income taxes and pot. Because Dallas and Denver are on a high! I really, really wish I could be a fly on the wall in Robert Shiller’s office someday. I say this because when I heard him speak as the huge national recession was setting in, this was about 2010, I had the chills. I had the chills because I truly thought housing was over as we know it. I thought my kids and grandkids would be doomed to leasing. He spread so much doom and gloom in my soul I may be permanently scarred.  Bob Shiller was not so bullish on housing back then.

But now the company that bears his name reports that Dallas-area home prices are up 10 percent from a year ago. They have hit a new record high in the latest Standard & Poor’s/Case-Shiller Home Price Index.

Our homes — single family homes, resales not new construction — are up 10 percent in March from last year. Prices are even up 1.2 percent from February. And March was the fourth month in a row that Dallas home prices increased at a double-digit rate from the previous year.

So where is the doom and gloom?

The story nationally is even better, but of course specifics are in some markets, like Las Vegas which is heating up again, and San Francisco, fueled by the tech billionaires and immigrants who gravitate there. Ditto New York City, though NYC prices are not higher than February. One wonders if this could have anything to do with the Ukraine situation. A lot of wealthy Russians buy in New York City — here, too, but way more in parts of Florida and New York City. I have heard that Boca Raton is almost over-run with Russians so much that some folks no longer want to buy there — keep tuned to SecondShelters.com for that story. I spoke to Robbie Briggs about this, because he has lived in China and knows how the international market affects real estate almost better than anyone. Robbie doesn’t think Ukraine will have much of an effect here, but it will have an effect in Europe. The Swiss are concerned that Russia could put a freeze on all funds in Russian banks, therefore making it difficult to get money out of that country. That, said Robbie, could put the brakes on Russian purchases in Eurpoe and in the U.S. Again, more of a problem for New York and Miami, not us.

All U.S.  cities had higher prices than a year ago, and all but New York were higher in March than in February, said S&P’s David Blitzer. But here’s the line I love:

“However, only Denver and Dallas have set new post-crisis highs and they experienced relatively lower peak levels than other cities.”

And yes, we are probably higher than Denver now, even without legal marijuana: Dallas-area home prices are now 6 percent higher than they were at the previous peak of the market back in 2007, according to Case-Shiller.

If you wonder why your cousins in suburban Illinois are still not happy campers, it’s because their markets still are not so hot: nationwide prices are still almost 20 percent below where they were before the recession. The stakes are still high Vegas, up 21.2 percent, and San Francisco, up 20.9 percent, from a year earlier.

In the 20 major cities Case-Shiller tracks, overall prices rose 12.4 percent.