Big comeback
Dallas and Fort Worth rank among top U.S. markets for housing recovery
As a testament to the region’s healthy economy, both the Dallas and Fort Worth housing markets have fully recovered — and then some — from the price declines they sustained during the Great Recession.
A new indexfrom mortgage website HSH.com shows Dallas-Plano-Irving ranks third among the 100 biggest U.S. metro areas for the level of home price recovery since the recession, while Fort Worth-Arlington ranks fifth.
In the second quarter of 2017, home prices in the Dallas area were 56.7 percent above their peak values in the mid-2000s, just before the recession; for the Fort Worth area, it was 47.5 percent.
Elsewhere in Texas, Austin ranks No. 2, with home prices 60.6 percent above their peak in the mid-2000s, and Houston is No. 4, with home prices 47.8 percent above their peak, according to the HSH.com index.San Antonio isn’t far behind at No. 8, with home prices 37.2 percent above their peak.
Topping the HSH.com list is the Denver metro area, where home prices in the second quarter of 2017 were 69.6 percent above their mid-2000s peak.
The HSH.com index crunches data from the Federal Housing Finance Agency as a basis to determine which housing markets have fully recovered — or even more — since the recession and which still lag behind the housing recovery.
In April, TenX, an online marketplace for real estate transactions, put Dallas at No. 2 on its list of the healthiest U.S. markets for single-family homes. Down further in the ranking were San Antonio (No. 11), Fort Worth (No. 12), Austin (No. 13), and Houston (No. 35).
In releasing the list, TenX noted single-family homes in the Dallas area remain inexpensive relative to household income.
“Thanks to its diversification, Dallas benefits from superior population growth and a solid economic forecast, both of which should continue fueling the metro’s housing market,” TenX said.
However, a June report from insurance giant Nationwide identified Dallas-Plano-Irving as one of the 10 most troubled housing markets in the U.S. during the first quarter of this year. The area ranked 396th among 400 metro areas for the health of U.S. housing markets. Dallas-Plano-Irving was the only one of the country’s 40 largest metro areas to show up in the report’s bottom 10.
Nationwide says the report’s negative ranking for the Dallas market was “mainly due to worsening affordability.”
The San Antonio market earned a positive ranking in the Nationwide report, while the rankings for Austin, Fort Worth, and Houston were neutral.