NEW YORK (Bloomberg News) – If you live in Texas and are thinking of putting your home on the market, you couldn’t have picked a better time, according to an article this week from Bloomberg News.
With housing inventory down, prices up and employment on the rise — which means more people looking for a place to live — the state is experiencing what the news source called a “suburban land rush.”
“Existing-home prices in Dallas and Houston are rising faster than at any time since the oil boom of the 1980s,” wrote Bloomberg reporter Prashant Gopal. “Home builders, caught off guard by the ferocity of buyer demand, are exhausting construction-ready lots as they struggle to recruit workers to complete houses quickly.”
One California-based real estate consultant said, “When the Texas housing market is strong, the home builders usually just build more. But the Texas economy is as strong as it has ever been and the builders can’t keep up.”
Real Estate Center Research Economist Dr. Jim Gaines told Bloomberg he projects about 100,000 single-family permits in Texas this year, up 20 percent from a year earlier, but 30,000 short of what it would need to keep up with job and population growth.
Meanwhile, home prices are rising not only in the state’s major metros but also in rural areas such as the West Texas oil fields and in South Texas’ Eagle Ford Shale region. So much so, Gaines is concerned that the state will lose its reputation for being an affordable place to buy a home.
“Our competitive advantage of relatively low housing costs is going to shrink,” he said. “We’re going down the same path as California and Florida if we don’t think of some way not to do it. You can sort of see it coming.”
Source: RECON