JANUARY 2022 DALLAS HOUSING MARKET UPDATE

We will start with interest rates.
Mortgage rates increased during the first week of 2022 to the highest level since May 2020 and are more than half a percent higher than January 2021. With higher inflation, promising economic growth and a tight labor market, we expect rates will continue to rise.

For a 30-year fixed-rate-mortgage, rates are currently at 3.22% with .7% in fees and points.
As far as the number of buyers in the market, there were fewer people applying for mortgages. They were down 2.7% from the two weeks before and 40% lower than the same time one year ago.

So let’s dig into the sales data for December and see how the DFW market ended the year.

For this local market data, I use numbers from single-family home sales in our entire MLS. These numbers are based on sales data from December.

The average sales price was $415,158. That’s a massive 16.1% jump from where it was the year before.
The number of homes for sale is at 9,772 homes. We are down 56.2% in the number of homes available to buy from last year. I don’t like seeing this since we need more inventory. In December 2018, we had more than three times this number of homes for sale. Literally over 32,000 homes on the market.

Our MLS recorded 10,387 sales in December, a 6.4% decrease over last year.
The time it takes for a home to go under contract is up to 27 days. We’re going in the right direction but it’s still a tighter market and moving faster than this same time last year where homes sat an average of 40 days.

Our months of inventory is at .9 months. Our inventory levels have been on the decline since August and we really need to see this number go up to help buyers in this market.

We listed 7,431 homes in December which is 4.4% less than the previous year. We are anticipating more listings in the new year compared with this year since there is so much pent-up seller activity. And what I mean by this is the fact that there are always reasons people need to sell and buy. Even when interest rates were sky high in the early 80s, people still bought and sold real estate. For the last almost 2 years, sellers have been sitting on the sidelines, holding out so that they don’t have to be a buyer in this market. Well a lot of sellers are getting antsy because their reason for selling hasn’t changed, but now they’re ready to move on to the next house and capitalize on this market that has brought them a lot of equity. So, my crystal ball tells me this number of homes listed is going to go up. Don’t prove me wrong, DFW!

Our average sales price per square foot went up from last month and is at $179 per square foot, a 20.9% increase from last year.