DFW Home Prices Down 10% From June’s Peak as Market Remains Slow

The median price of a single-family home in the region was $390,000 in December.

Dallas-Fort Worth home prices were down 10% in December from June’s peak as affordability challenges kept selling activity slow.

The median price of a single-family home in the metro area was $390,000, still up 6% from the previous December, according to the latest report from the Texas Real Estate Research Center and North Texas Real Estate Information Systems.

Economists are not expecting a major decline in home prices in 2023. Still, many potential buyers are hesitant because they are unsure of where prices could be going, said Lee Harbaugh, a real estate agent with Davey Goosmann Realty in Mansfield.

“There’s a lot of feeling of uncertainty,” he said.

Real estate agents sold 6,246 single-family homes in the metro area last month, a year-over-year decline of 29%. December’s decline in sales is just shy of November’s, which was the sharpest since immediately after the Great Recession.

For all of 2022, existing home sales were down 12% with more than 89,000 transactions and the median sale price was up 16% to $407,000.

With the lower demand for homes, the number of active listings was up 160% in December from a year before with 16,607 homes on the market.

Dallas-Fort Worth has 2.2 months of available home inventory, which is still far off from the roughly six months of supply that’s considered a balanced market between buyers and sellers.

D-FW condo sales fell 48% from a year before with 215 transactions, according to the Texas A&M report. Townhome sales fell 17% with 274 deals. The median price of a condo is up 9% to $240,000 while townhome prices are up 6% to a median of about $392,000.

Single-family home renting is up 22% with 2,258 leases through real estate agents in December.

Within the Dallas-Plano-Irving metro division, 4,054 homes sold, a year-over-year decline of 28%. The median sale price there was $408,000, up 5%.

In the Fort Worth-Arlington area, 2,192 homes sold, a decline of 31%. The median price there was $360,000, up 6%.

Of the major D-FW counties, Collin County homes sold for the highest median sale price of $500,000, a 6% year-over-year increase. Just over 1,000 homes sold in the county, a 22% decline from a year ago.

“The frenzy of the last two years could not continue, and we are seeing a softening brought on by rising rate increases,” said Michael Coburn, broker and owner of Re/Max Town & Country in Allen, in a statement. “[2023] will be more of the same, with slower sales and steady prices.”

The average rate of 6.5% for a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage as of Jan. 5 is down slightly from the 7%-plus rates seen in November, according to Freddie Mac estimates. But rates are still significantly up from a year ago when the average was 3.2%.

Some potential buyers are simply priced out of the market because of the rates, Harbaugh said. “Mortgage rates, I think, are going to have to come down a little bit more for a lot of those people to step back into the game,” he said.

Harbaugh said he had a buyer lined up for one of his listings in Farmers Branch in the early fall, but because the home was part of a family estate, it took longer than expected to legally clear the home to sell.

Now, as the seller is about ready to put the home back on the market, their buyer from the fall no longer qualifies.

“Rates shot up so much, even between September and December, that they had they basically lost out on their ability to afford that house,” Harbaugh said.

Source: The Dallas Morning News