Real Estate Rumblings
Has the Dallas housing market gotten too hot? This authority thinks so.

Dallas' real estate market may be getting too hot. That's according to a new report from Realtor.com, which ranks Dallas No. 5 on a list of overheating U.S. housing markets.
To determine the rankings, the real estate website looked at 50 of the largest housing markets and analyzed home prices, rental costs, and median income, as well as popularity of mortgages, new developments, and flipping homes. Using 2001 as a baseline, Realtor.com culled data through 2015 to see how it compares to the infamous housing bubble of 2007.
Right now, Dallas homes have a median price of $335,000. That's 13 percent higher than 2001 and only 2 percent below the market peak. Being so close to the peak market price may be alarming to Dallas homeowners, but Realtor.com chief economist Jonathan Smoke says we're not headed toward a collapse.
"There are places that have risks," Smoke says. "But even those places do not resemble what they looked like in their actual bubble years."
Realtor.com notes that Dallas, like Austin, wasn't hit as hard by the recession as other cities. And home prices are increasing (up 9 percent since last year) because of high demand, thanks to companies like Toyota moving to the area. "If the demand stays where we are, I don’t see prices coming down anytime soon," says agent Debbie Murray of Allie Beth Allman & Associates.
Austin ranks third on the list of overheating markets. The median home price is $400,000 (17 percent higher than 2001) and only 1 percent less than the peak price.
California's San Jose and San Francisco rank Nos. 1 and 2. Rounding out the list are Salt Lake City, Utah (No. 4); Los Angeles (No. 6); Fresno, California (No. 7); Buffalo, New York (No. 8); Charleston, South Carolina (No. 9); and Portland, Oregon (No. 10).