January D-FW Home Sales Were the Weakest in Four Years
The North Texas housing market started 2019 in the dumps. Home sales were down 10 percent from January 2018, and sales prices fell in almost a dozen Dallas-area residential districts. The nosedive in the area's home market comes after several years of booming sales and record price increases. In the second half of 2018, home purchases in Dallas-Fort Worth slowed and price increase evaporated. "There has been sort of a malaise out there with consumers," said Ted Wilson, principal with Dallas-based housing analyst Residential Strategies. "We pushed and pushed prices, and consumers finally got to the point they couldn't take much more. "That played out pretty clearly in the fourth quarter." It has continued into 2019.
In January, North Texas real estate agents sold 5,294 homes through their multiple listing service — the lowest one-month sales total in four years, according to data from the Real Estate Center at Texas A&M University and North Texas Real Estate Information Systems. "Even though it was off in January, it's off from the best year ever in real estate," said Jim Fite, CEO of Century 21 Judge Fite Realtors. "We still had a decent month, all things being considered." Overall median sales prices in January were a scant 2 percent higher than a year earlier at $240,000. Prices declined sharply in some neighborhoods, including a 21 percent year-over-year slump in Hurst and a 14 percent drop in Keller. Prices were down 12 percent from January 2018 levels in East Dallas, Far North Dallas and Irving. The home sales that closed in January are from contracts written in November and December — a period when mortgage rates were moving higher...
