2014 Second Best Year for Texas Home Sales

RECON and AUSTIN (Texas Association of Realtors) – The Texas housing market closed out 2014 with one of the highest fourth-quarter single-family existing home sales volumes in the state’s real estate history, according to the Fourth Quarter 2014 Texas Quarterly Housing Report released yesterday by the Texas Association of Realtors.

Ending a year-long trend of flat annual home sales growth, the year-end increase in home sales made 2014 the second-best year ever for Texas real estate.

The report showed that 66,664 homes were sold in Texas in the fourth quarter, an 8.46 percent increase from the same quarter of 2013. This is significantly higher than the 0 percent to 2 percent year-over-year increases in single-family home sales seen throughout the first three quarters of 2014.

Real Estate Center Research Economist Dr. Jim Gaines said, “A dip in mortgage interest rates below 4 percent in the last half of 2014 created an ideal climate for this year-end surge in home sales growth. However, fewer homes on the market and strong demand maintained rising home prices and shrinking months inventory.”

Texas home prices continued to climb year-over-year in the fourth quarter, but at a slower pace than the nearly 10 percent annual increases seen throughout the last two years. In the fourth quarter, the median price was $185,900, a 7.76 percent increase from a year before, and the average price increased 6.99 percent to $240,976.

The second half of 2014 saw an end to the double-digit quarterly drops in housing inventory that have occurred since summer 2011 but still did not prevent Texas housing inventory from hitting an all-time low of 3.3 months in the fourth quarter.

“Texas home sales in the first half of 2015 are expected to be similar to what we’ve seen in 2014, but continued increases in home prices and record low inventory levels should still continue,” cautioned Gaines. “Historically, Texas home prices have risen only 4.5 percent year over year. Continued housing demand, especially in Texas’s metro areas, will be critical to sustaining our market’s strong housing development in 2015.”

This story was published on RECON (Real Estate Center Online) which is part of Texas A&M University. It is reprinted here through a news partnership between RECON and Corridor News