Dallas-Fort Worth home prices dropped in the third quarter of last year as the market reacted to months of interest rate hikes.
Home prices were up almost 11 percent year over year but declined 1.1 percent from October to November, the fifth consecutive month in a downward trend, the Dallas Morning News reported. DFW prices hit the highest totals last June but have declined an overall 6.6 percent since then, according to the S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller Index.
National optimism is leading into 2023 as many economists project mortgage rates will begin to steady. Average rates for 30-year fixed mortgages were holding over 7 percent in October but have fallen to 6.1 percent as of January, according to Freddie Mac data. But rates are still up well over 3 percent compared to the buying boom a year ago that flooded the North Texas market with prospective buyers.
“Home price growth continued its hasty deceleration at the end of 2022 as homebuyers and sellers decided to wait out the cold winter and, for some, shockingly high mortgage rates,” said CoreLogic chief economist Selma Hepp. “Nevertheless, falling mortgage rates in December did bring forward some renewed optimism among buyers. And, if mortgage rates continue trending lower, the 2023 spring home buying season may prove busier than many initially expected.”
The median price for a single-family home in DFW was about $390,000 in December, up 6 percent from December ’21.
Market activity is expected to thaw in 2023 but it will be a much tamer year for housing compared to last, Zillow senior economist Nicole Bachaud said.
“The same factors that plagued the market throughout most of 2022 were still at play at the end of the year, with high mortgage rates and price growth causing a significant affordability hurdle that kept many buyers and sellers on the sidelines,” Bachaud said. “As a result, the [U.S.] housing market — and subsequently home price growth — slowed from a sprint to a crawl.”
Many in Dallas have a more optimistic outlook, as new brokerages continue to open. In a local economic outlook event in January, Chris Kelly, president and CEO of Ebby Halliday Companies, said the 2023 Dallas-Fort Worth housing market will likely be a mirror image of 2022, starting slowly then accelerating in the second half of the year. Ebby Halliday led North Texas in home sales in 2022 with $9.9 billion, according to the Dallas Business Journal.
—Erick Pirayesh