Home prices in Dallas-Fort Worth were flat year over year. Inventory continues to rise but buyers aren’t biting as concerns over interest rates linger.
D-FW home prices were up 0.19% in March compared to last year. That’s well below the national average of 3.4% growth, according to the latest S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller Home Price NSA Index.
Of the 20 major metros tracked in the report, Dallas reported the slowest positive price growth. Only Tampa (-2.2%) showed falling prices.
“Buyers are not biting,” said Sriram Villupuram, a real estate and finance professor at the University of Texas at Arlington. “It’s a buyer’s market (in Dallas). It’s a question of the seller deciding to go down on their price and clear the market. The only impediment, which is getting worse, again, is the interest rate.”
New York (8%), Chicago (6.5%) and Cleveland (5.9%) saw the largest price growth.
Month-over-month, U.S. home prices rose 0.8%. In D-FW, prices increased 0.52%.
“U.S. home prices rose 0.8% in March, matching the pre-pandemic average,” said Thomas Malone, a Cotality economist. “Most metros followed suit, though New York and Cleveland outpaced historical norms. Florida continued to slump, with prices falling in Miami and Tampa, while Southern metros like Dallas posted below-average growth. The slowdown reflects rising insurance costs— especially in flood-prone areas— and a shift in demand northward as the South’s affordability advantage narrows.”
The Case-Shiller index is a three-month moving average that compares sales price changes of specific properties over time to provide a more accurate picture of market trends. It measures changes in the total value of all existing single-family housing stock.
It does not sample sale prices associated with new construction, condos, apartments, multifamily dwellings or other properties that can’t be identified as single-family, according to the report’s methodology.
More recent housing data shows that prices in North Texas are dropping slightly while inventory increases.
The median price of a home sold in the D-FW area in April was $400,000, down 1.2% from the prior year, according to data from the MetroTex Association of Realtors.
There were more than 32,800 active listings in the region, up 39.5% from last April. The months of housing inventory is 4.3 months.
That figure measures the number of months it would take for the current inventory of homes to sell given the current sales pace.
Experts generally consider an inventory of five or six months as balanced between buyers and sellers.
Still, sales are down. There were 8,130 closed transactions last month, down 4.7% compared to last April.
Concerns about tariffs and economic uncertainty continue to keep buyers on the sideline and send mortgage rates rising.
Rates have jumped slightly in the past few weeks. The average 30-year mortgage rate as of May 22 was 6.86%, according to Freddie Mac.
Home prices haven’t moved enough to offset the interest rates, Villupuram said.
“All in all, I think (D-FW home prices are) going to be flat for a while, until interest rates go down substantially, which I don’t see a reason for interest rates to go down,” he said.