The seasonal decline in local home sales moderated in October after a double-digit decrease the month prior.
Dallas-Fort Worth home sales declined 7.8% month-over-month and 5.9% year-over-year in October, according to the latest RE/MAX National Housing Report. Meanwhile, new listings grew 3.5%, and housing inventory jumped 20.1% in October, suggesting some housing pressures are finally starting to soften as new homes go live.
“Interest rates are up, people have concerns about the economy, low inventory, yet the Dallas real estate market is surprisingly strong and improving,” Mark Wolfe, president-broker/owner of RE/MAX DFW Associates, told The Dallas Express.
While local home sales are down 5.9% over the last 12 months, new listings are up 6.8% on the year, and the monthly supply of new inventory grew 19.3%, according to data in the report.
During the third quarter of 2023, homebuilders initiated construction on more than 13,000 new single-family homes in the DFW area, marking a slight decrease from the previous quarter but a 39% increase compared to the same period last year, according to a quarterly housing report from Dallas-based consulting firm Residential Strategies, as reported by The Dallas Express.
“In this soft market, more than half of the builders in our survey reported using incentives to bolster sales, including mortgage rate buydowns, free amenities, and price reductions,” said Robert Dietz, chief economist at the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB), CNBC reports.
According to the RE/MAX report, the median home sale price in DFW is $390,000, a 1.3% decrease month over month and a 1.2% drop year over year. Additionally, the average DFW home took 45 days to sell in October, up from 42 days during the same period in 2022.
“Not included in [Multiple Listing Service] stats are the hundreds of new home sales that are offering buy-down interest rates,” Wolfe told The Dallas Express in an email. “At our firm, we finally broke even with home sales in September over one year prior. We were up 10% in October and forecast to be up 15% in November.”
DFW has a resilient housing market and a robust labor market, which makes it poised to become one of the leading economic powerhouses in the nation, per Business Insider.
“Given the interest rate environment, it was good to see the trend of monthly inventory gains continuing, and prices appear to be stabilizing for the moment,” said Nick Bailey, president and CEO of RE/MAX, in the report.
“It remains a challenging market, but demand for homes is still high – and buyers are gaining a little more leverage as time goes on.”
