Dallas Housing Forecast for 2018: Is It Getting Back to ‘Normal’?

Photo by Jeremy Woodhouse

        The average cost of home purchases in Dallas rose by nearly 8% to an average of 299K in 2017. The Home Buying Institute recently came out with an article earlier this year which cites economists working at Zillow commenting on the 2018 housing market. They expect the increase in average selling cost by 4.1% in 2018. They state that 2017 was an anomaly caused by limited Supply of housing, specifically that Dallas only had a 2 to 3 month supply of homes due to investors buying properties. However, the substantial increase in price seen in 2017 is unlikely because wage growth is not keeping up with the rise in price. Furthermore, construction has increased in and around Dallas, gradually increasing the supply of homes. Although growth is slowing, Dallas is still a hot market and is simply seeing a normalization of price increases (average increase between 3% and 5%) for the 2018 year. Support for this claim is seen in Dallas Morning News' Real Estate Editor Steve Brown's article published on April 26th. Brown discusses how DFW's market may have already peaked.