It might sound crazy but Houston’s housing market is still red hot

Houston home owners in the market to sell their houses before Hurricane Harvey engulfed them were surprised to find buyers are still interested. One couple in a Houston suburb got a call from their real estate agent about a week after the hurricane swept through the city and forced them to wade out of their house.

“I didn’t think anyone would be interested for years,” Roger Powell told the New York Times.

They weren’t the only ones: Redfin agents reported having 45 buyers waiting to ink contracts on new homes before Harvey and, once the storm was over, they only lost eight deals. In fact, Houston’s housing market is so hot that a week after Harvey, the brokerage said it closed two deals on Labor Day.

While resuming showings about a week after the storm, Redfin noted an uptick in demand for homes not damaged by Harvey, while other buyers were looking for a deal by picking up a flooded house. The venture-backed brokerage predicts an increase in housing prices as repairs for damaged homes reduce the number of new single-family homes by an estimated 45 percent.

Despite it all, some outsiders still view Houston’s housing costs as better than their home markets like one Chicago couple who told the Times they weren’t deterred by Harvey because they wanted the chance to buy a house — apparently come hell or high water. [NYT] — E.K. Hudson