Home Prices Continue to Rise in DFW
DFW: The Dallas-Fort Worth residential market continues to receive some welcome news. The latest S&P CoreLogic Case- Shiller report says that home prices in North Texas in May signaled the fourth-straight month of increases. DFW home prices from April to May rose 1.6%. Since January, home prices have increased more than 4%. The continued upward price increase is an about-face to seven months of decline that began last summer. Home prices reached an all-time high last June, but steadily dropped more than 8% throughout 2022 and January because of economic uncertainty, higher mortgage rates and other factors that kept many would-be homebuyers on the sidelines. The North Texas Real Estate Information Systems and the Texas Real Estate Research Center at Texas A&M have reported that the median single-family home price in North Texas in June was $415,000. Home prices continued to rise in other parts of the country, as well.
TEXAS: Delivered. Signed. Now waiting for voters to seal it. As expected, Governor Greg Abbott has signed into law an $18 billion tax cut bill that will help Texas property owners. Now, it will be up to voters to seal the deal in a November vote. More than $12.6 billion of the state’s budget surplus will be used to cut school taxes for property owners. The package includes raising the homestead exemption from $40,000 to $100,000. Nearly 6 million homeowners will see an average savings of 40%. There will also be a temporary 20% cap on appraisal increases for non-homestead properties valued at $5 million or less. Those include business properties and vacation or rental homes. The governor’s signature came after months of “negotiating” by the state’s top Republican leaders.
TEXAS: It’s taking fewer days to sell a home in Texas. The Texas Research Real Estate Center at Texas A&M University says in a recent report that the average days on the market in May went down for the first time since March of last year—from 59 days to an average 56 days. Dallas averaged 51 days on the market, while Houston stayed at 52 days and San Antonio at 68 DOM.
DFW: Five North Texas master-planned residential communities have been rated among the top 50 in the country. Four of those five communities that RCLO Real Estate Consulting noted were Hillwood Communities. The report ranks the sales of the communities from the first six months of this year to the same period last year. Silverado in Aubrey was ranked at No. 19. The remainder were Hillwood properties: Union Park, Little Elm, 37; Pecan Square, Northlake, 42; Harvest, Argyle, 46; and Lilyana, Celina, 48. Sunterra in Katy, outside of Houston, ranked third on the overall list that included 22 Texas communities.
DFW: A Dallas-based real estate investment company that owns thousands of rental homes across the country just added a few thousand more to its portfolio. Invitation Homes already was the owner of some nearly 3,000 homes before its $650 million purchase of 1,900 rental homes mostly across the South earlier this month. The company’s portfolio at the end of the second quarter was more than 90% leased. Over the past two years, real estate investors increased their purchases of homes in order to rent them, many times easily outbidding other potential buyers because of their cash offers. In the second quarter, Invitation Homes’ net income rose 24% to nearly $140 million on $600 million in revenue.
U.S.: It’s true that numerous vacant office buildings across the country are turning residential, including numerous throughout Dallas-Fort Worth. But in some regions, some of those office buildings are becoming vegetable farms. Seriously. One is in Arlington, Virginia, which recorded a nearly 24% office vacancy rate in the first three months of the year. There, a company called Area 2 Farms has transformed a former paper company and warehouse building into a vegetable farm that grows all types of vegetables and herbs by moving them throughout the building during the day via a system of conveyor belts to simulate sun and shade. The retrofitting was less expensive than converting to residential space. Data shows that as much as 20% of office space across the country is vacant, compared to pre-pandemic levels. Across the border in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, AgriPlay Ventures is utilizing one floor of the multistory Calgary Tower Center to produce 30 annual growing seasons of strawberries, tomatoes, cucumbers and other green vegetables.
LA LA LAND: It just goes to show superstar Rihanna can sell just about anything—and quickly, too. The singer and beauty products entrepreneur, who has more than 180 million followers on Twitter (or X) alone just sold a Beverly Hills home in less than a month. She bought the 1930s Tudor home in 2021 for $10 million. She sold it a month earlier this summer for about $10.3 million. The 5,100-square-foot home has four bedrooms and five baths, tons of amenities throughout and beautifully landscaped grounds outdoors, including gardens, sitting areas, a pool, a patio and a small sports court. Rihanna is not going far. She has a home next door, which she purchased for $13.7 million in 2020.