Archive for the 'Dallas-Fort Worth' Category

By Steve Brown / The Dallas Morning News
June 7, 2009

Earlier this year when federal lawmakers voted to give first-time homebuyers a tax incentive, they hoped the move would boost home sales.

And that seems to be happening.

The offer of an $8,000 tax credit – combined with low mortgage rates – has lured thousands of buyers to the beleaguered housing market.

Keller resident Joe Palacios is one of them. He and his wife are purchasing a new home.

“The tax credit was icing on the cake,” said Palacios, who’s living with friends until the couple’s four-bedroom Pulte home is finished this summer. “My wife and I were looking at apartments that were going for $1,200 a month.

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Despite huge cuts in the residential construction business, Dallas-Fort Worth still ranks second in the country in new-home sales and starts.

Only Houston had more new-house construction and sales during the 12-month period ending in March, housing analyst Metrostudy Inc. said Tuesday in a new report.

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Two recent residential foreclosure reports show seemingly contradictory data – one reporting the Dallas-Fort Worth area with the highest level of foreclosure postings in the last two decades and the other showing the Metroplex with ever-increasing home values.

But local experts say the data isn’t contradictory at all.

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Highland Park Village is changing hands but not its character.

Like an expensive heirloom, Henry S. Miller Interests has sold the Mediterranean-style shopping center to another extended family that hails from the wealthy neighborhoods surrounding it.

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Local housing experts say 2009 may be sluggish, but with interest rates at historic lows and looming inflation in 2010 and 2011, it’s time to buy.

A panel of five residential industry leaders shared their analysis and forecasts of the Dallas-Fort Worth housing market at the Residential Real Estate Forum held at the Fort Worth Convention Center. Though many of the experts had different theories as to how government efforts to improve the nation’s declining housing market are faring, all said they had seen indicators of a strengthening economy.

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By Steve Brown, The Dallas Morning News

Apr. 24–The Texas housing market is likely to be one of the first to recover when the nationwide building slump is over, the head of the country’s largest homebuilding association says.

Joe Robson, chairman of the National Association of Home Builders, was in the Dallas area Thursday talking with local builders and helping kick off a home tour to replace this year’s Parade of Homes.

Robson, a builder from Tulsa, Okla., who heads the trade group based in Washington, D.C., said Dallas and Texas in general have held up very well during this recession. “All over Texas, they’ve done a pretty good job of keeping housing inventories in check.”

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By STEVE BROWN / The Dallas Morning News

Dallas-area neighborhoods took their biggest hit yet in the first-quarter housing market.

Sales fell more than 30 percent in a dozen residential districts. And several neighborhoods saw substantial declines in median sales prices during the first three months of 2009.

Some of the biggest price drops were in close-in areas such as North Dallas, East Dallas and Oak Cliff, where median sales prices fell by more than 30 percent from the first quarter of 2008, a study of North Texas home sales shows.

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Dallas based homebuilder Centex, one of the nation’s biggest, is being purchased by its larger competitor from Michigan, Pulte Homes. KERA’s Bill Zeeble has more

The deal’s valued at 3.1 billion dollars. It includes an exchange to Centex shareholders of Pulte stock, with more than half the purchase amount assumed in debt. Pulte’s CEO, Richard Dugas Jr said by combining the two industry leaders, a return to profitability would be accelerated.

Both companies have lost millions in the down economy that’s hit homebuyers, and therefore homebuilders especially hard. Pulte expects to save 350 million dollars in efficiencies over the next 3 years. Some of those savings usually come from layoffs, but there are no specifics on that yet.

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Last Sunday, Wes and Kalee Seymour loaded up their family and drove from Greenville to Dallas for the chance to buy their first home.

The Seymours and almost 200 others crowded into an airport hotel for an auction of about two dozen foreclosed houses.

“We came to another one but weren’t successful,” said Wes Seymour, who lives in an apartment with his wife of just over one year and their 8-month-old son. “We have been looking at auctions because you can get properties cheap.”

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By STEVE BROWN / The Dallas Morning News

Most Texas home markets continued to eke out tiny increases in home prices in early 2009, according to a new report by First American CoreLogic.

Texas home prices were up by just less than 2 percent in the California-based housing analyst’s latest survey released Monday.

While Texas prices rose, nationwide home prices in January fell by 11.6 percent compared to a year ago to the lowest level in almost five years.

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