The asking price for Dallas-Fort Worth homes hits the $400,000 mark

Dallas-Fort Worth homes hits

That’s up more than 14% from the same time last year.

Forecasts of a more measured housing market in 2022 are already falling flat.

Houses in North Texas are still flying off the shelf with asking prices soaring by double-digit percentages to a new all-time high, according a new report by Realtor.com

Median home listing prices in Dallas-Fort Worth were up more than 14% year-over-year to a record $400,000.

And the number of houses listed for sale with real estate agents in D-FW was almost 40% less than in January 2021. Home inventories were already at unheard of low levels.

The median time to sell a house in North Texas was just 43 days.

Nationwide home listing prices in January were more than 10% higher than in the first month of 2021, and the number of houses for sale with agents was down more than 28%.

“We’re forecasting a whirlwind year ahead for buyers and, if January housing trends are any indication, 2022 competition is already heating up,” Realtor.com chief economist Danielle Hale said in a just-released January update. “Homes sold at a record-fast January pace, suggesting that buyers are more active than usual for this time of year.

“But it’s a different story on the other side of the closing table, with new seller listings continuing to decline in January,” she said. “Factors like omicron uncertainties could be causing sellers to hesitate even when they know housing conditions are favorable.”

Many economists have predicted that home price gains this year will slow and the competition for properties will ease because of higher mortgage costs and an expected increase in home listings.

So far, that hasn’t happened in North Texas.

“While 2022 is forecasted to be a seller’s market, annual home price growth is expected to moderate from the 2021 pace,” Realtor.com analysts say in its latest forecast. “This is partly due to looming rate hikes, which will cut into buyers’ ability to meet high asking prices and have already begun to rise more quickly than anticipated.”

With thousands of people moving to Texas and a shortage of homes to both purchase and rent, upward pressures on home costs remain high in the state’s major metro areas.

In January, home sales list prices in the Austin area rose by more than 28% to a median $545,000.

Austin had the third-highest price increases in the country, behind Las Vegas (35.3%) and Tampa (28.7%),

Median home list prices declined from a year ago in several major U.S. markets, including Los Angeles (-10%), Memphis (-8.1%) and San Francisco (-4.6%).

Asking prices were up 18.6% year-over-year in the San Antonio area to a median of $350,000, according to Realtor.com.

Houston had the smallest big-city gains in the state, with list prices up only 8.5% from January 2021.

North Texas home sales prices were up 20% in December to a record $353,000, according to local real estate agents’ multiple listing services.

Source: DallasNews