Date Archives: September 2021

The average DFW home down payment is now $40,000

With home prices soaring, buyers must spend more up front to put a roof over their heads.  Dallas-Fort Worth-area homebuyers on average are forking over almost $40,000 in down payments when they purchase a property, according to a study by LendingTree.  That's an all-time high, but D-FW down payments are less than the $46,283 nationwide average in the 50 largest metro areas.  "While there are signs that the housing market is beginning to cool somewhat, home prices are still significantly higher in many parts of the U.S. than they were before the coronavirus pandemic," LendingTree's Jacob Channel said in the report. "One of the side effects of these higher home prices is higher down payments."  "If you are a first-time homebuyer, that means the nest egg you need to save up is basically 16% larger than it was a year ago because home prices have gone up," said Frank Nothaft, CoreLogic's chief economist. "The first-time homebuyers are having sticker shock right now.  "That's why we are seeing in some of the latest statistics maybe there's a bit of a slowdown in homebuying toward the end of the summer."

Dallas Morning News, September 8, 2021

Major Economists do not see a big wave of foreclosures

Millions of homeowners have been sheltered from foreclosures since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.  But with mortgage forbearance programs and foreclosure moratoriums winding down, is there going to be a surge in home foreclosures?  While some investors are hoping to see a rise in problem properties, top real estate market economists don't anticipate a huge number of forced home sales by lenders.  "We don't think we are going to see a tsunami of foreclosures occurring," said Dr. James Gaines, the longtime economist with the Texas Real Estate Research Center at Texas A&M University. "I don't think we will start seeing anything until the first half of next year.  "It's a relatively small number of homes still getting mortgage forbearance.

At the end of August, only about 3% U.S. home loans were in forbearance plans, according to the latest estimate from the Mortgage Bankers Association of America. That adds up to about 1.6 million homeowners.  The share of home mortgages in payment forbearance is less than half what it was a year ago.  Home foreclosures have been almost nonexistent in the last year, with most lenders holding back from forcing property sales.  Any rise in home foreclosures won't compare with previous down cycles, Gaines said.  "There will be nothing on the scale we saw back in 2008 and 2009," he said. "We don't see it happening — particularly in Texas."  Because of big increases in home values in D-FW and other Texas markets in the last few years, most homeowners have large amounts of equity in their houses.

Dallas Morning News, September 10, 2021

The competition to snag a home continues to ease, with August seeing the fewest competing offers so far this year.   About 58.8% of the home offers by Redfin agents faced competition, a new low for 2021, according to the technology-powered real estate brokerage.   This is a decrease from the revised bidding-war rate of 62.1% a month prior and it's well below the "peak of 74.3% in April," according to Redfin.  

The August rate is also lower than the bidding-war rate of 59.4% reported a year ago.    "While sellers continue to have the upper hand, buying a home has become slightly easier this summer as the country's acute shortage of homes for sale is no longer intensifying and the market has undergone its typical seasonal slowdown," Redfin said.    Although sellers are still pricing their homes "very high," not all buyers aren't biting. 

Fox Business, September 14, 2021

Dallas area home prices soared by more than 21% in the latest nationwide comparison.  The surge in local home costs set a year-over-year record gain for the Dallas area in the closely watched S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller Home Price Index.   Nationwide prices rose by 18.6% in June compared with a year earlier.   The nationwide jump was the largest in the Case-Shiller report in more than 30 years, according to S&P's Craig J. Lazzara.

"June 2021 is the third consecutive month in which the growth rate of housing prices set a record," Lazzara said in the report. "The last several months have been extraordinary, not only in the level of price gains but in the consistency of gains across the country.  Dallas-area home prices have more than doubled in the last decade in the Case-Shiller report.

Texas home sales by y real estate agents declined 17% in July from a year earlier due to the lack of properties for sale and some buyers pulling out of the market because of home prices.   But demand for homes in the Dallas area remains very high.

"Demand for housing continues to far outweigh the supply of homes for sale," Zillow economist Matthew Speakman said in a statement. "But despite the enduring market competition, more recent data indicate that the scalding hot housing market may have cooled slightly in recent weeks.

Dallas Morning News, August 31, 2021

If you're waiting for Dallas-Fort Worth's rapid home price appreciation to cool before buying a house, you may have to sit it out for at least another year.  Despite some indicators that the Dallas-Fort Worth housing market may be cooling, a new report projects that home prices will increase an eyebrow-raising 21.1% over the next year.  The projected increase is the ninth highest in the nation, according to online home services portal Porch.  Porch used national home sales data from Zillow, Redfin and the U.S. Census to make its home price predictions.

If DFW hits the 21.1% projection, it will exactly match the metro area's gain in home prices for the past year in the latest Case Schiller Index, which measured June 2020 through June 2021. The increase set a year-over-year record gain for the Dallas area.

Here is a summary of the data for the Dallas-Fort Worth metro area:

• Forecasted one-year change in home price: +21.1%
• Current median home price: $297,044
• Sale-to-list price ratio: 102%
• Median household income: $72,265
• Home price-to-income ratio: 4.11X

For reference, here are the statistics for the entire United States, according to Porch:

• Forecasted one-year change in home price: +14.9%
• Current median home price: $287,148
• Sale-to-list price ratio: 102%
• Median household income: $65,712
• Home price-to-income ratio: 4.37X

Dallas Business Journal, September 6, 2021