This is a great time to be shopping for a house in Dallas, but not such a great time to be trying to sell one. As reported by the Dallas Morning News, residential sales listings in Dallas have grown almost five percent in the past three months. Here are article excerpts:
The number of houses on the market is 15 percent higher than a year ago, the latest statistics from the Realtors’ Multiple Listing Service show.
“When you look at year-over-year inventory counts, we’re much higher, and most sellers don’t want to first list their properties for sale in August or September,” said Altos Research vice president Scott Sambucci. “This would indicate that the new sellers hitting the market are going to be distressed or bank foreclosures to an extent.
“But banks are smart – they aren’t going to just throw a bunch of inventory on the market during a seasonally slow time of year,” Sambucci said. “So while some of the inventory is REO [real-estate owned], not all of it is.”
Record-low interest rates and bargain home prices are no doubt prompting some owners to try to unload their current houses so they can move.
Dallas sales agent Barry Hoffer says it’s a case of “sellers wanting to move up and take advantage of favorable home values and the lowest interest rates that we have seen in decades.”
Hoffer, who works at Ebby Halliday Realtors, said some listings are left over from the peak summer sales market.
Whatever the reason, single-family home sales listings in North Texas have topped 42,000 – the highest level since August 2008 and up from a low of 31,589 last December.
Looking nationwide, the number of homes listed for sale with real estate agents has grown in the last three months by almost 9 percent in Houston, 8.5 percent in Los Angeles and 7 percent in San Francisco.
The increase in home listings is coming at a time of year when seasonal buying begins to slow.
And this year – because of the April expiration of the federal housing tax credits – home sales in North Texas and elsewhere are down sharply from a year ago.
Maybe that’s why home listing prices are falling. Altos Research says they have dropped about 1.7 percent in the last three months in the cities they survey.
In the Dallas area, list prices in the MLS have fallen an average of more than 3 percent during the last 90 days, the California-based research firm found.