North Texas pre-owned home sales fell 25 percent in November – the sixth month in a row that sales have been down from a year earlier.
Real estate agents sold 4,250 single-family homes last month through their Multiple Listing Service, the lowest monthly sales total since February. Through the first 11 months of 2010, just over 59,000 houses have been sold by agents, according to data released Tuesday by the Real Estate Center at Texas A&M University and North Texas Real Estate Information Systems. Home sales in North Texas so far this year are down 7 percent from 2009 levels.
Home purchases in the Dallas-Fort Worth area have slowed significantly since federal tax credits expired earlier this year.
Prices have remained slightly higher – up 1 percent in November with a median value of $142,000. But that’s down about 7 percent from earlier this year, when the tax credits were bringing out large numbers of buyers.
And there would likely be no increase in median prices if not for a substantial increase in high-end home sales this year.
Home sales were up 10 percent in Far North Dallas and 88 percent in North Dallas in November from a year earlier.
At the same time, sales of homes fell in most moderate- and low-price neighborhoods.
At the end of November, more than 37,000 single-family homes were listed for sale with Realtors – an increase of 13 percent.
And the average time it takes to sell a house had grown 12 percent from last year to 85 days. That’s the highest average days on market figure since early 2009.
The housing outlook for the rest of the year looks guarded. Pending home sales in November were 12 percent lower than this time in 2009.