Articles Tagged "Relocation"

The North Texas housing market is downshifting quickly, with Dallas-Fort Worth being the only U.S. market to see a decrease in home sale prices last month, according to a report released today.  DFW home prices are down 1.9% year over year in July, according to the latest Re/Max National Housing Report.

And what a difference a month makes.  Last month, DFW led the U.S. for home price increases, with June prices up 29.3% over the previous year.   In hard numbers, home sales prices in DFW fell to $413,900 in July from $422,000 in July 2021.   Homes in DFW spend an average of 23 days on the market before selling.

Higher interest rates and inflation, as well as record home prices, triggered a sharp drop in demand for housing, said Todd Luong, a realtor with Re/Max DFW Associates:  "Here at our Re/Max office in Dallas-Fort Worth, our listings are currently getting on average 2.7 showings per week," Luong said. "Last year, at this same time, our listings were earning on average 5.9 showings per week. That is a huge drop in buyer demand compared to the previous year. Record home prices and higher mortgage rates have forced many potential buyers out of the market, especially first-time homebuyers."

While the latest trends may disappoint some sellers, buyers now have more choices and better opportunities for good deals, Luong said.   Luong said that the DFW housing market has been challenged with low inventory for years and reached an all-time low earlier this year, with only a two-week supply. Now, however, inventory is increasing.  "Although buyers have more choices now, it is still not a balanced market as we only have about a two-month housing supply," Luong said. "In a normal market, you have about a five to six-month supply of housing."

A new report from Zillow also found falling home values, although the numbers didn't match Re/Max's precisely because of different study methods and different geographic definitions of DFW as a metro area, among other reasons.  According to Zillow's findings, the Dallas-Fort Worth metro area's typical home value is $396,904, down 1.1% since June, the first month of decline. Values are up 55.4% since July 2019.

Zillow also reported that the mortgage payment on a typical home in DFW is $2,633 a month, including taxes and insurance. That's up 77.4% compared to July 2019.

According to Zillow, inventory in DFW has risen 10.2% since June, and the share of listings with a price cut in July was 22%, compared to 15.6% in June.  Nationwide, after two years of unprecedented growth, home values fell for the first time since 2012 as competition for houses eased, according to Zillow's July market report.

The slowdown is being driven by decreased competition among buyers. Zillow's analysis says that affordability pressures have pushed many to the sidelines, and buyers are waiting in the wings to resume their search if and when prices relax a bit.  Skylar Olsen, Zillow's chief economist, called the flattening of home values "a badly needed rebalancing.  This slowdown is about discouraged buyers pulling back after the affordability shock from higher rates," Olsen said. "As prices soften, many will renew their interest, and we will continue our progress back to 'normal.'"

Luong said he sees positive signs in the market.  The interest rate for a 30-year fixed mortgage dropped below 5% after peaking in June. More than 290,000 new jobs were added in Dallas-Fort Worth last year, so North Texas has one of the strongest labor markets in the country.   "Reasonably priced homes that are in good condition and move-in ready are still selling very fast," he said. "However, the bidding wars have subsided considerably across the board."

• Dallas Business Journal, August 19, 2022

If you're looking to move to the Dallas/Fort Worth area, house hunting can be complicated by the commute to open houses and other viewings. If you spot a particularly appealing choice among the Dallas homes for sale, you may consider making an offer before you're able to tour the house in person. This option has its risks, but with some caution, making an offer before you have a chance to see the house in real life can pay off. 

• Take A New Look 
  Making an offer sight unseen is much less literal than it used to be. With services such as Facetime, Zoom, and Skype, it's possible to take a virtual tour. A seller may arrange for a virtual open house to show off their home to potential buyers, or you may ask for a personal virtual viewing. Low-tech options include hiring a home inspector or even a trusted friend to tour the property and take notes. Our real estate agents will be happy to facilitate a viewing that meets the needs of buyers and sellers alike.
  
  
• Working In The Dark
  Virtual tours can be challenging if you're not used to the technology and may gloss over elements you should inspect more closely. Virtual tours may pay little attention to the outdoor spaces, focusing instead on the house itself. You don't get a chance to tour the neighborhood or view the street the house is on, and online data on the neighborhood may be outdated. A virtual tour, while helpful, shouldn't be your only information on the house or the area the house is in. You'll need to do more careful research when making an offer on a house you cannot personally view.
  
  
• A New Insight 
  Online research into the neighborhood, combined with virtual tours and the help of a real estate agent and a licensed house inspector, can help you expand the area of your house hunt well beyond the areas you can commute to for in-person viewings. You may get broader insights into the area where you plan to move than if you'd stuck to just in-person viewings alone. A house inspector can spot issues that homebuyers just don't have the experience to readily identify. A friend you trust to inspect the house won't be under the same pressure you might feel to make an offer, and is free to be more discerning.  Every precaution you should take when making an offer sight unseen will make your house hunt a better one, even with properties you have the chance to view in person. 

While you may prefer to wait to view a property in person, making an offer before you can see a house can be a sound purchasing decision. We'd love to discuss your home viewing options with you. Please contact us today. 

After several years of ever-increasing sales, there are signs that North Texas' million-dollar home market has hit a ceiling.  Sales of high-priced Dallas-area homes have shot up in recent years, rising at a much greater rate than the overall housing market.  There are now more than a dozen Dallas-area mansions on the market with price tags of more than $10 million, according to Realtor.com.  While demand for low- and moderate-priced houses is still rising in North Texas, the latest sales numbers show that purchases of million-dollar properties have leveled off.  For the last few years, million-dollar home sales in the Dallas-Fort Worth area have grown at double-digit percentage rates.  Housing analysts say that the inventory is rising while more moderate-priced properties are in short supply.  "The inventory is mostly at the upper end," said George Ratiu, senior economist with Realtor.com.  "That's not where the most demand is."

• Dallas Morning News, October 14, 2019

A new poll reveals that 53% of California residents are considering leaving the Golden State because of the high cost of living.The "Trust Barometer" poll, by Edelman Intelligence, was conducted January 4-20 among 1,500 California residents, with a margin of error of 2.5%. A special oversample of 400 tech workers in the San Francisco Bay Area was also conducted, with a margin of error of 4.8%. The results are sobering. Nearly two-thirds, 62%, of respondents said they believed the best days of California were in the past.  Nearly three-fourths of residents, 72%, say "cost and availability of housing is a very serious issue for California" — rising to 76% in the Bay Area.  And 62% of residents say "homelessness is a very serious issue for California. The proportion in the Bay Area is the same.  SFGate.com notes: "It appears the housing and homelessness crises have led to a pessimistic outlook."

• Joel Pollak, February 14, 2019,  SFGate.com, February 1, 2019

Even migration is bigger in Texas. 

Dallas-Fort Worth leads all U.S. metropolitan areas as the largest net gainer with 246 people arriving daily, according to a Bloomberg analysis of 2017 Census data on migration for the nation's 100 largest regions. In 2014, the crown belonged to Houston with 269 migrants per day.   After Dallas-Fort Worth, the rest of the top five also are Sun Belt beacons -- Phoenix, Tampa, Atlanta and Orlando. Seattle, at number six with a gain of 116 people daily, is the only cold-weather destination in the top 10. The daily influx surpassed 100 people in nine cities, while Chicago, New York, and Los Angeles saw an exodus of more than 100 people every day.

These figures exclude the natural increase in population, which is the difference between the number of live births and the number of deaths.  The migration trend has two channels -- international and domestic. Relocations can lead to large skill and investment transfers. People who choose to relocate to other parts of the country are taking their talents with them. States and local governments make a large investment in educating people and many people further this by investing in a college education, so when one moves, a large investment transfer is occurring.

Dallas-Fort Worth was the greatest beneficiary of domestic migration, adding nearly 59,000 domestic movers in 2017. Business relocations to North Texas have been steady since the Great Recession. In just the last few weeks, Fortune 500 companies McKesson and Core-Mark announced moves to the area. Both are leaving California.

• Dallas Morning News, December 14, 2018

Frisco, for the first time in at least five years, topped the U.S. Census bureau's list of fastest-growing big cities in the nation, adding an average of 37 new residents every day for a population jump of 8.2 percent, data released Thursday showed.   The booming Dallas suburb also landed in the ninth spot in terms of the raw number of residents it added over the year that ended in July -- an impressive feat for a city that, at 177,286 people, is still relatively small.    The 14 largest cities in the country didn't change from the prior year.  Which means that Texas surpassed California's share of the top 15 list, with five cities making the cut. California -- which has about 11 million more residents than the Lone Star State overall -- had four.

Dallas-Fort Worth was one of the top destinations for domestic migrants from California in 2017, according to a recent study.  There were 1,051 moves from coastal California, the home of some of the country's toughest housing markets, to Dallas in the first quarter of 2017, according to Alexandra Lee, a housing analyst with the real estate listing and research site Trulia, which did the study.  Out of 19,132 moves out of the region during that time period, 5.5 percent went to D-FW.   Houston is also a popular destination for people fleeing the California coast — 3 percent of the migrants in the study came to Texas' most populous city, meaning that 8.5 percent of those in the study came to either Dallas-Fort Worth or Houston.   The Trulia report looked at census data for transplants from four coastal California hubs: San Francisco, San Jose, Los Angeles and San Diego. Homes in those markets listed for an average of $720,000 in March 2017, Trulia says, compared to $313,000 in Dallas and $250,000 nationally.   The home prices in these cities is clearly a major determinant in whether people leave California and to where they move, Lee said over email, but it's not the be-all and end-all.  Texas is a big destination for job-to-job flows, a U.S. Census Bureau-designed statistic that measures flows of employees from one company to another when they've been at each company longer than three quarters. The biggest source of these flows is California, which contributed 6,884 in the first quarter of 2016.

• Dallas Morning News, June 28, 2018