He made allowances for year-over-year performance: “Of course, it’s still below from where we were a year ago a little bit,” he said. “We had a decline from $530,000 to $435,000. Part of that is seasonal. For the market, always the best time is in the first six months of the year.”
New home sales also impressive
New home sales performance has not been as dramatic but still is an outlier when compared to other markets, he suggested. “New homes have not experienced the kind of drastic decrease in pricing that pre-owned homes have, and that’s due to the fact that builders have been able to offer pretty strong buyer incentives, Reator bonuses and pay for upgrades, closing costs, that sort of thing, or a combination of all that. I’ve seen buyer incentives as high as $50,000.”
He used the Dallas-Fort Worth market as an example: “We’ve had really a moderate decrease in new home sale prices throughout Texas. In Dallas-Fort Worth, just to give you an idea, new home sales prices July and August were a little over $500,000 to $512,000, and in April they were only down to $488,000. There hasn’t been that much of a decline, but it’s been buffered,” he said, referring to buyer incentives.
Pending sales also bode well for the market
Pending sales are also encouraging, he added. “Pending sales have come up very nicely,” he said, again using the Dallas-Fort Worth market as an example. “Resale homes were 3,700 in January and in March were 6,700 – a very large percentage increase.”
Caballero noted the seasonal nature of the volume, and the conservative aspect of the calculations given the cut-off to data reporting and allowances made for less-than-prompt reporting by some.
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