Green Brick Partners, Inc. (GRBK)

[Enterprising Investor]

Home resales and prices set scorching pace in August (9/08/15)

By Steve Brown

North Texas’ hot summer housing market racked up more big gains in August.

Sales of preowned homes in the area were 13 percent higher than in August 2014. And median prices rose 9 percent year-over-year, according to the latest numbers from the Real Estate Center at Texas A&M and the North Texas Real Estate Information Systems.

Real estate agents last month sold 10,223 preowned single-family homes through their multiple listing service. It was the third month in a row that resales in North Texas topped 10,000 — a new record.

Through the first eight months of 2015, preowned home sales are running about 5 percent ahead of the same period last year.

And with pending sales for next month 50 percent higher than a year ago, it’s likely the home market will hit new highs in September.

“Everything we are hearing from the Realtors and the builders is the demand remains very strong,” said housing analyst David Brown with Metrostudy Inc. “A lot of times when a home is formally listed for sale it’s already under contract.”

On average it took just 38 days to sell a house in North Texas, according to the latest estimates. There’s less than a three-month supply of properties being marketed by agents.

Brown said high prices in the new home market are driving more buyers to preowned properties.

“One reason the resale market is staying so strong is the new home market is getting so expensive,” he said. “The median price of new homes is pushing toward the $300,000 level.”

Preowned homes sold in North Texas last month had a median price of $210,000, according to the Real Estate Center.

Only 21,270 houses were listed for sale with real estate agents in the more than two dozen North Texas counties included in the report. That’s down 4 percent from August 2014. The Dallas-Fort Worth area has some of the fastest-growing housing prices in the country.

Recent reports by CoreLogic and the National Association of Realtors show that median prices in the area are up between 9 and 12 percent this year.

http://www.dallasnews.com/business/residential-real-estate/20150908-home-resales-and-prices-set-scorching-pace-in-august.ece