Displaying blog entries 291-300 of 517
The Christie Cannon Team is proudly sponsoring The District Concert Series! Join us every Friday evening in October for some music, food and fun! Located at The Shops at Willowbend, The District hosted it's first concert series last year! See the flyer below to see the line up.
Contact us at 972-215-7747 if you have any questions! We can't wait to see you there!
Can you say “reversion to the norm”?
Mike and Tracy Voegtle are not getting back into the Dallas housing market anytime soon. Who can blame them? It took months of constant searching for the couple to find their Far North Dallas home back in 2013. That year, the local residential property market was the hottest it had ever been. Cash offers were being made for homes all over the area. Prices soared higher by the day. Supply was limited. Demand seemed endless.
That meant the Voegtles had to drag their three boys to multiple open houses on the weekends and face disappointment as they lost out on the first six houses they bid on. Finally, they landed a four-bedroom, four-bath place near Brentfield Elementary.
As the Dallas housing market has stayed hot in the years since, the Voegtles’ house has appreciated significantly, even though the only major change they have made was putting in a pool. But something else has changed in the Voegtles’ neighborhood. “For Sale” signs are standing on lawns a lot longer than they used to.
“The housing market around us feels like it is slowing down a bit,” says Mike, an architect with Dallas’ 5G Studio. “We’re seeing houses sitting on the market for a long time now, for months, even. That didn’t happen a few years ago.”
In fact, the average days on the market for a house in North Texas is now 53—the highest it has been since the Voegtles bought theirs. That’s just one of the many signs that the once white-hot Dallas housing market has finally begun to cool down.
Don’t panic. This is not a bust. It is not a crash. If you are a homeowner in the Dallas area, you will not have to start making your belt out of cardboard. Prices overall are still increasing. First-quarter home prices in North Texas increased 1.4 percent over their level in 2018, according to the National Association of Realtors.
That was the smallest price gain in the area since 2011. In 2011, the median home price in North Texas was $150,000. Today, it is $254,300. So if area price increases have slowed, does that mean that $254,300 is something like the top of what has been a huge upward sales market here?
Not according to Zillow. It’s dubbed the Dallas market “cool,” but it’s also calling for a 7.5 percent rise in the median home price this year. That’s only half the 14.2 percent rise last year. But it still means the market is on an upward trajectory.
The reason for that is simple. There are jobs here, and tens of thousands of people are still moving to this area looking to land those jobs. The Bureau of Labor Statistics says 102,500 new jobs were created here in 2018. That helped cut the local unemployment rate to 3.3 percent as this story was going to print—lower than the 3.9 percent national average. There are 3.7 million people in this area going to work every day now.
Some of those people are new. About 130,000 people moved into the Dallas and Fort Worth area just last year alone. Some experts figure that about a third of those people want to buy a house. That’s a lot of new demand on top of whatever demand already existed before those 40,000 people dropped into this market.
The bottom line? “Home prices this year will still probably go up in Dallas-Fort Worth,” says Jim Gaines, chief economist at the Real Estate Center at Texas A&M University. “But they’re not going up as fast. In economics terms, we call what is happening a ‘reversion to norm.’ The market is going back to its normal pace of activity. Instead of being in a state of exuberance where prices go up 10 percent annually, they’ll return to going up 3 or 4 percent.”
For homeowners, it seems like good news that the demand is still out there and prices are still climbing. But, then, what’s the deal with those lingering “For Sale” signs in Mike Voegtle’s neighborhood?
As every Econ 101 student knows (or ought to know), when demand is high and supply is low—both phrases describe the overall North Texas housing market—prices go up. And, sure enough, whether you ask Zillow or the National Association of Realtors or just about anyone else, prices here are continuing to rise.
Don’t panic. This is not a bust. It is not a crash.
Sales, however, are not really going up. In January there were about 15,254 homes listed for sale in a part of the Dallas area that includes Plano and many other northern communities and Irving and other western cities. In April there were about 18,012 homes listed. That, in real estate agent-speak, is about three months of inventory, meaning that, if no new houses were listed for sale for the next three months, the existing level of demand would consume all the current listings and there’d be no more homes left to buy here. There are, of course, new listings coming online all the time—both for new homes and existing homes. Dallas leads the nation in number of new homes under construction. In 2018, construction began on 34,523 new homes here, up almost 3 percent from the year before. Houston ranked second to Dallas with 30,206. No other city reached 30,000 “home starts,” as they’re called.
Even so, Dallas still has only about three months of inventory on hand, well down from levels seen earlier this decade. Said in fewer words: supply is tight. Demand is high. So why are sales flat and why are price increases slowing? Many experts offer the same explanation: the prices are too damn high.
“There has been some price fatigue,” Gaines says. “People are looking at what they’re being asked to pay and there’s a little more resistance from buyers. If they’re not getting exactly what they want, they’re not buying it at all.”
Little wonder, then, that 61 percent of Dallas-area residents (an increasing number of whom are young people in the early phases of their careers) are now renters and not owners.
Jeff Duffey, who runs Jeff Duffey & Associates, a real estate firm that handles both existing and new home sales in Dallas, thinks that too many sellers believe Dallas is experiencing a boom market that gives them total control over pricing. “For example,” he says, “two to three years ago, it was hard to find many homes in North Dallas that were listed between $400,000 and $600,000. Now I can show someone homes for five straight weekends and still not go through all of the active listings in that price range. Sellers who have overpriced their homes or who think they don’t need to go through the trouble to fix up their homes for sale are watching their properties sit on the market. Buyers don’t want those homes and they don’t need them.”
But some potential buyers may also simply not be able to afford what’s on the market in many neighborhoods. Since 2012, prices in the Dallas market are up more than 60 percent. Fitch Ratings, a credit analysis firm, says the Dallas market is one of the more overvalued in the country and that prices are 15 percent higher than what they should be based on the growth of the area’s population, income, and average rental prices. The median income in North Texas has gone up a lot in the last 10 years, jumping from $58,025 to $67,382. That’s 16 percent. Median home prices in the same time period are up 70 percent.
“There are a whole bunch of houses now that are priced in higher price points—price points that a lot of people can’t afford,” says Paige Shipp, regional director in Dallas-Fort Worth for Metrostudy, a real estate research firm.
The National Association of Home Builders has crunched numbers that tell the same story on affordability here. The NAHB puts together a quarterly Housing Opportunity Index—a ranking of the percentage of total homes for sale that are considered affordable to the typical family. In Dallas a decade ago, the NAHB’s Index found that 75.7 percent of the homes were affordable. That rating increased a year later, peaking at 79.9 percent in the first quarter of 2010. But it has fallen sharply in recent years, sinking to just 45.2 percent in the second quarter of 2018, then rebounding slightly to 52.4 percent in the first quarter of this year.
Affordability isn’t just a problem in Dallas. It’s a major issue in many big markets today, like San Francisco. Still, the national affordability index average is 61 percent—higher than overall affordability in Dallas.
Builders have started to address buyer concerns about affordability by hanging drywall on thousands of new homes priced between $250,000 and $350,000. Metrostudy says one-quarter of all new home construction in the area is in that price range. A handful of those homes are townhouses located in Dallas. But most are more traditional single-family houses in communities far from the center city, with price points in the $250,000 to $350,000 range.
Examples include Sandbrock Ranch in Aubrey and Union Park in Little Elm—new developments popping up around U.S. 380 in Denton County. “Highway 380 is hot as a firecracker,” says Bill Shaddock, a partner in Shaddock Development Co. and CEO/owner of Capital Title of Texas.
For those who aren’t interested in seeing the pop of that affordable, exurban firecracker—and all the issues of sprawl that go with it—the Dallas area still has plenty to offer buyers and sellers, even as the market reverts to some of its former norms. “This is the first time in my career I’ve been able to say to my sellers that if they do certain things to their homes and are careful with how they price it, they will absolutely sell the home in a week,” Duffey says. “That’s not a guarantee real estate agents are normally willing to make, but I know that the buyers are still out there, and they’re ready to make a deal.”
Here are the hottest and nottest places in North Texas, based on change in median prices.
Last week realtor.com released the results of a survey that produced three major revelations:
Since we are currently experiencing the longest-ever economic expansion in American history, there is reason to believe a recession could occur in the not-too-distant future. And, it does make sense that buyers and sellers remember the horrors of 2008 when they hear the word “recession.”
Ali Wolf, Director of Economic Research at the real estate consulting firm Meyers Research, addressed this point in a recent interview:
“With people having PTSD from the last time, they’re still afraid of buying at the wrong time.”
Most experts, however, believe if there is a recession, it will not resemble 2008. This housing market is in no way the same as it was just over a decade ago.
Zillow Economist, Jeff Tucker, explained the difference in a recent article, Recessions Typically Have Limited Effect on the Housing Market:
“As we look ahead to the next recession, it's important to recognize how unusual the conditions were that caused the last one, and what's different about the housing market today. Rather than abundant homes, we have a shortage of new home supply. Rather than risky borrowers taking on adjustable-rate mortgages, we have buyers with sterling credit scores taking out predictable 30-year fixed-rate mortgages. The housing market is simply much less risky than it was 15 years ago."
George Ratiu, Senior Economist at realtor.com, also weighed in on the subject:
“This is going to be a much shorter recession than the last one, I don't think the next recession will be a repeat of 2008...The housing market is in a better position.”
In the past 23 years, there have been two national recessions – the dot-com crash in 2001 and the Great Recession in 2008. It is true that home values fell 19.7% during the 2008 recession, which was caused by a mortgage meltdown that heavily impacted the housing market. However, while stock prices fell almost 25% in 2001, home values appreciated 6.6%. The triggers of the next recession will more closely mirror those from 2001 – not those from 2008.
No one can accurately predict when the next recession will occur, but expecting one could possibly take place in the next 18-24 months is understandable. It is, however, important to realize that the impact of a recession on the housing market will in no way resemble 2008.
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On Labor Day we celebrate the hard work that helps us achieve the American Dream.
Growing up, many of us thought about our future lives with great ambition. We drew pictures of what jobs we wanted to have and where we would live as a representation of a secure life for ourselves and our families. Today we celebrate the workers that make this country a place where those dreams can become a reality.
According to Wikipedia,
“Labor Day honors the American labor movement and the contributions that workers have made to the development, growth, endurance, strength, security, prosperity, productivity, laws, sustainability, persistence, structure, and well-being of the country.”
The hard work that happens every day across this country allows so many to achieve the American Dream. The 2019 Aspiring Home Buyers Profile by the National Association of Realtors (NAR) says,
“Approximately 75% of non-homeowners believe homeownership is part of their American Dream, while 9 in 10 current homeowners said the same.”
Looking at the number of non-owners, you may wonder, ‘If they believe in homeownership, why haven’t they bought a home yet?’. Well, increasing home prices and low inventory can be part of the reason why some haven’t jumped in, but that does not mean there is a lack of interest. The same report shows the increase in the desire to buy in the last year (as shown in the graph below):
As we can see, there are more and more people each quarter who want to buy a home. The good news is, as more inventory comes to the market, more non-homeowners will be able to fulfill their dreams. Finally, they’ll be able to move into that home they drew when they were little kids!
If you’re a homeowner considering selling, this fall might be the right time, as there are buyers in the market ready to buy. Let’s get together to determine how you can benefit from the pent-up housing demand.
Below are 5 compelling reasons listing your home for sale this fall makes sense.
The latest Buyer Traffic Report from the National Association of Realtors (NAR) shows that buyer demand remains strong throughout the vast majority of the country. These buyers are ready, willing, and able to purchase…and are in the market right now. More often than not, in many areas of the country, multiple buyers are competing with each other to buy the same home.
Take advantage of the buyer activity currently in the market.
Housing inventory is still under the 6-month supply that is needed for a normal market. This means that in the majority of the country, there are not enough homes for sale to satisfy the number of buyers.
Historically, a homeowner would stay an average of six years in his or her home. Since 2011, that number has hovered between nine and ten years. There is a pent-up desire for many homeowners to move as they were unable to sell over the last few years due to a negative equity situation. As home values continue to appreciate, more and more homeowners will be given the freedom to move.
Many homeowners were reluctant to list their homes over the last couple years, for fear that they would not find a home to move to. That is all changing now as more homes come to market at the higher end. The choices buyers have will continue to increase. Don’t wait until additional inventory comes to market before you decide to sell.
Today’s competitive environment has forced buyers to do all they can to stand out from the crowd, including getting pre-approved for their mortgage financing. This makes the entire selling process much faster and simpler, as buyers know exactly what they can afford before shopping for a home. According to Ellie Mae’s latest Origination Insights Report, the time needed to close a loan is 43 days.
If your next move will be into a premium or luxury home, now is the time to move up. There is currently ample inventory for sale at higher price ranges. This means if you're planning on selling a starter or trade-up home and moving into your dream home, you’ll be able to do that in the luxury or premium market.
According to CoreLogic, prices are projected to appreciate by 5.2% over the next year. If you’re moving to a higher-priced home, it will wind up costing you more in raw dollars (both in down payment and mortgage) if you wait.
Look at the reason you decided to sell in the first place and determine whether it is worth waiting. Is money more important than being with family? Is money more important than having the freedom to go on with your life the way you think you should?
Only you know the answers to these questions. You have the power to take control of the situation by putting your home on the market. Perhaps the time has come for you and your family to move on and start living the life you desire.
That is what is truly important.
![A Recession Does Not Equal a Housing Crisis [INFOGRAPHIC] | MyKCM](https://files.mykcm.com/2019/08/29021439/20190830-MEM-1046x1308.jpg)
According to the Pew Research Center, around 37% of U.S students will be going back to school soon and the rest have already started the new academic year. With school-aged children in your home, buying or selling a house can take on a whole different approach when it comes to finding the right size, location, school district, and more.
Recently, the 2019 Moving with Kids Report from the National Association of Realtors®(NAR) studied “the different purchasing habits as well as seller preferences during the home buying and selling process.” This is what they found:
The major difference between the homebuyers who have children and those who do not is the importance of the neighborhood. In fact, 53% said the quality of the school district is an important factor when purchasing a home, and 50% select neighborhoods by the convenience to the schools.
Buyers with children also purchase larger, detached single-family homes with 4 bedrooms and 2 full bathrooms at approximately 2,110 square feet.
Furthermore, 26% noted how childcare expenses delayed the home-buying process and forced additional compromises: 31% in the size of the home, 24% in the price, and 18% in the distance from work.
Of those polled, 23% of buyers with children sold their home "very urgently," and 46% indicated "somewhat urgently, within a reasonable time frame." Selling with urgency can pressure sellers to accept offers that are not in their favor. Lawrence Yun, Chief Economist at NAR explains,
“When buying or selling a home, exercising patience is beneficial, but in some cases – such as facing an upcoming school year or the outgrowing of a home – sellers find themselves rushed and forced to accept a less than ideal offer.”
For sellers with children, 21% want a real estate professional to help them sell the home within a specific time frame, 20% at a competitive price, and 19% to market their home to potential buyers.
Buying or selling a home can be driven by different priorities when you are also raising a family. If you’re a seller with children and looking to relocate, let’s get together to navigate the process in the most reasonable time frame for you and your family.
![A Latte a Day Keeps Homeownership Away [INFOGRAPHIC] | MyKCM](https://files.mykcm.com/2019/08/22112914/20190823-MEM-1046x1308.jpg)
Every three years, the Federal Reserve conducts its Survey of Consumer Finances. Data is collected across all economic and social groups. The latest survey data covers 2013-2016.
The study revealed that the median net worth of a homeowner is $231,400 – a 15% increase since 2013. At the same time, the median net worth of renters decreased by 5% ($5,200 today compared to $5,500 in 2013).
These numbers reveal that the net worth of a homeowner is over 44 times greater than that of a renter.
As we’ve said before, simply put, homeownership is a form of ‘forced savings.’ Every time you pay your mortgage, you are contributing to your net worth by increasing the equity in your home.
That is why Gallup reported Americans picked real estate as the best long-term investment for the sixth year in a row. According to this year’s results, 35% of Americans chose real estate. Stocks followed at 27%, then savings accounts and gold.
If you want to find out how you can use your monthly housing cost to increase your family’s wealth, let’s get together to help you through the process.
Displaying blog entries 291-300 of 517
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