Last year’s bull housing market will be hard to top in 2014.
Dallas-area home sales rose almost 20 percent from the previous year, and prices jumped more than 10 percent — more than double the average annual increase North Texas usually sees.
With the local economy booming and consumers ready to buy real estate again, the only limitation this year will be availability and pricing.
“I don’t think 2014 will be as crazy as last year,” said D’Ann Petersen, an economist with the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas. “Home sales would be doing better if we had more inventory on the market.
“We have seen good increases in prices, but I don’t know if that is going to continue at the rate we saw last year,” she said.
In 2013, median home sales prices were up by double-digit percentages in more than two dozen Dallas-area residential districts The Dallas Morning News tracks.
The biggest sales price increases were in neighborhoods in Oak Lawn, Oak Cliff, Mesquite, Irving and North Dallas, according to data from the Real Estate Center at Texas A&M University.
The number of homes sold rose by more than 20 percent from 2012 levels in 13 area residential districts, including Sunnyvale, Hurst, Rockwall, Sachse-Rowlett and Far North Dallas.
Covering the area
Jim Fite, president of Dallas’ Century 21 Judge Fite Realtors, said that housing activity is good in neighborhoods across the Dallas area.
“We are looking forward to a 6 percent to 8 percent increase in sales in 2014,” Fite said.
The inventory of homes listed for sale with real estate agents last year fell to less than a two-month supply in several residential areas, including The Colony, Richardson, Grapevine, Coppell, Allen and Plano.