Houston has remained a force to be reckoned with regarding home sales but, as they say, all good things must come to an end. Case in point: Houston home sales. After boasting small declines over the last, few months, August home sales fell nearly 10 percent from just a year earlier. Nearly 5,060 homes were sold in August, according to the Houston Association of Realtors.
The Demise of the High-End Market
Because of this, most industry experts expect September sales to be down, as well. The segment expected to see the biggest decline in sales are homes priced $500,000 and above, in areas such as River Oaks. Although sales are brisk in this category, overall dollar volume is nearly half of what is was just a year earlier. Translation: home sellers are slashing the prices of their luxury homes in an effort to get them sold.
Another low point for higher-priced Houston homes is the difficulty in which many buyers have securing a mortgage. The availability of jumbo loans – those that exceed $417,000 – is now tougher than it has ever been, thereby leaving the high-end market just about as stagnant as it can be.
The new homebuyer tax credit has helped the lower-end market over the last, few months. As a result, the decline of home sales has increased slightly.
Home Prices Leveling Off
With all the doom and gloom of the real estate market in Houston, many industry professionals see signs of a leveling off, with home prices leveling off and, in some areas, gaining strength. A good indicator of this change is the fact that the median price for a home in Houston in August was $160,080, the fourth consecutive monthly increase.
Homes in foreclosure still made up about 16.7 percent of the homes sales in August, down from 34 percent over the better part of the year.
