Home prices down 3.5% in Dallas-Fort Worth
By STEVE BROWN / The Dallas Morning News
The latest home price report card shows a 3.5 percent drop in the Dallas-Fort Worth area.
But the North Texas market’s decline was less than half the nationwide price decrease of 7.6 percent in the second quarter compared with a year earlier, the National Association of Realtors said Thursday.
Officials with the Washington, D.C.-based real estate trade organization are holding out hope that the worst of the housing slowdown is over and that buyers are returning to the market.
“Prices having fallen sharply and quickly in very distressed markets, but most or all of the price declines may have already occurred in these areas since buyers have now returned to those markets,” economist Lawrence Yun said in the report.
“Furthermore, the momentum of buying is likely to continue in light of the housing stimulus package that was recently enacted,” he said.
But most other economists and top homebuilders predict that the housing market won’t bottom out until sometime next year at the earliest. And price declines are expected to continue in many markets due to high numbers of foreclosures and a weak national economy.
About three-fourths of the 150 U.S. cities surveyed in the second quarter had declines in home prices.
