EPISODE 15: DALLAS-FORT WORTH REAL ESTATE UPDATE FRIDAY, JANUARY 31, 2020

Each week we condense market data and highlights from the news into an easily understandable blog post.

It's quick and Incredibly Informative with no fluff.

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​Interest Rates
Surprise, surprise, mortgage rates have dropped again! We haven’t seen a rate this low in three years. For a thirty-year fixed rate mortgage the average is 3.51% with .7% in fees and points.

Mortgage Applications
In the latest weekly survey, mortgage applications rose 7.2% from one week earlier.
 
Market News
On Thursday, January 30, the U.S. Census Bureau released their Quarterly Residential Vacancies and Homeownership report covering the fourth quarter of 2019.
 
About 88.5% of the housing units were occupied, leaving vacancies at 11.5%. Owner-occupied units made up 57.6% of the total housing units and renter-occupied units made up 30.9%.

The homeownership rate is on the rise after a major dip in 2016. In 2005 the homeownership rate was at its highest it has been this decade at 69.1%.
 
The Case-Shiller housing price index for November was released on Tuesday. The index is currently at 212.56, a change of 15 basis points from last month.

The Case-Shiller housing price index looks at the value of the housing supply in twenty individual metro areas and compiles those int a merged index. Of those metro areas, the ones with the highest year-over-year gains were Phoenix, Charlotte, and Tampa. Dallas had a year-over-year change of a positive 2.8%.
 
In more local news, Texas is the second most popular state for relocating according to the Texas Realtors’ 2020 Relocation Report. The data tracks numbers from 2018. The metros bringing the highest volume of residents to DFW are Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim, New York-Newark-Jersey City, and Chicago-Naperville-Elgin. DFW had the highest number of incoming residents from out of stats at 200,966.
 
What’s also interesting to note is that we had 462,140 residents move out of state in 2018. Where’d they go? California, Oklahoma, and Colorado mostly.
 
The Takeaway
With homeownership on the rise, low interest rates, a positive economic outlook, and an upcoming spring market, my crystal ball tells me that it’s about to get busy for Realtors.