An Important Housing Question for Dallas City Council Candidates

What is the price of a median home in Dallas? Not the Metroplex, not Fort Worth, but the City of Dallas?*

My short-lived political career was officially buried on May 1 when I lost in the four-way race for the District 11 Dallas City Council seat. But my love of politics (basically real estate’s sibling) will never end. That’s why we are so glad to have Jon Anderson’s voice back here on CandysDirt.com with a more critical look than most at pending development in this city. And we are eager to hear dissenting views.

Real estate is our oil. City council candidates seek the endorsement of three real estate-related special interest groups not only for the PAC money (about $2,500 a pop) but for votes. The idea is that the PACs will encourage people of similar interest to vote. In Dallas City Council elections, these PACs hold candidate forums and vote on which candidate to endorse: The Dallas Apartment Association (special interest: more apartments), TREC The Real Estate Council (special interest, commercial real estate), and MetroTex Association of Realtors (the residential real estate association many of our readers — including yours truly — pay dues to.)

I happen to believe that most all our council candidates know the price of a median home in Dallas. Not the North Texas Metroplex, but Dallas.

Which is why I chuckled over this tidbit in Bloomberg: Shaun Donovan and Ray McGuire, two of the candidates seeking to become New York City’s next mayor, were so far off on the cost to buy a home in Brooklyn during recent interviews with the New York Times, I almost spit out my coffee. What real estate planet are they living on anyways?

Here are the candidates’ answers to the question of how much the median home price in Brooklyn is:

Former Obama housing commissioner Shaun Donovan: $100,000

Former Citibank Exce Ray McGuire: $80,000 to $90,000

Former Presidential Candidate Andrew Yang: $900,000.

Former City Sanitation Chief Kathryn Garcia: $800,000

Lawyer & Civil Rights Activist Maya Wiley: $1.8 million

The answer? $900,000

That a former housing commissioner could be so out of touch is scary, but not surprising. My friend Jonathan Miller says it’s been close to 40 years since the median sales price in Brooklyn was $100,000.

Miller has data going back to 2003, when the median in Brooklyn was $299,130. His Manhattan numbers date to 1989, when the median price in New York’s costliest borough was $240,000. At the time, Brooklyn prices were about a third less than Manhattan, meaning the last time Brooklyn’s median was $100,000 was in the early 1980s, Miller said.

So let’s ask the run-off candidates: What’s the median price for a home in your district? *But wait, please, util AFTER the candidate forums!