Economist Has Spoken: Texas Housing Growth Factors ‘Have Peaked and Are Slowing’

The word from Dr. Luis Torres, a research economist for the Texas Real Estate Research Center at Texas A&M University, is that the frenzy is over, according to the indicators he’s following.

“Both housing sales growth and housing price growth have peaked and are slowing,” Torres said in a news release last week. “In addition, months of inventory, listings, and days on market have reached a trough and are beginning to rise.”

Does this mean we should stop gleefully checking our Zillow home value so much?

Possibly. Torres pointed to factors such as depressed mortgage rates, more people preferring to buy homes, lessening pandemic effects on homebuyers, federal government transfer payments, and the continued suspension of student loan debt payments are keeping demand strong. As supply increases, so do home sales, he said.

In place of the frenzy, we can expect more long-run sustainable rates of growth, he said.

The Texas Real Estate Research Center forecasts for 2021 and 2022 have expectations for strong demand, improving inventories, moderate price growth, and slowly rising mortgage rates.

Torres’ opinion carries a lot of weight, like the influence of a Federal Reserve chairman.

But he’s right. In North Texas, home sales dropped in October, the fifth consecutive month of year-over-year declines.

In Texas Real Estate Research Center’s joint report with Texas Realtors on third-quarter housing health, the numbers aren’t yet pointing to this turnaround.

In the Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington market, the median home price of $354,900 is up 18.3 percent compared to the same quarter last year. Compared with 3Q 2020, active listings are down 28 percent, closed sales are down 9.3 percent, and months of inventory are 1.3 months, down from 1.9 months.

North Texas real estate agents sold 31,486 single-family homes in the third quarter, the most in the state, according to the Texas Realtors Association.

Statewide, the median price of $310,000 is up 16.9 percent, active listings are down 18.2 percent, closed sales are down 3.5 percent, and months of inventory are 1.6 months, down from 2.3 months in 3Q 2020.

“Across the state, we’re still experiencing strong demand for housing, and buyers are moving to Texas from all over the nation,” Marvin Jolly, a Plano agent and chairman of the Texas Realtors Association, said in the report.