Texas Mortgage Seekers, Take Note: Dallas Home Prices Continue to Fall

Dallas home prices fell during the fourth quarter - but this region was far from alone; at least six dozen other U.S. housing markets witnessed prices plummet.

Pre-owned home sales prices in the Dallas-Fort Worth (DFW) area dropped almost 4 percent in the final months of 2006, the National Association of Realtors said in its benchmark survey, which was released Thursday.

It’s the first time in more than a decade that D-FW home prices have dropped that much in the quarterly report. This does at least mean that it’s an ideal time for a Texas mortgage seeker to apply and make an offer on a house.

Nationwide, the median price of U.S. homes fell 2.7 percent in the fourth quarter – the third consecutive quarter of declining prices.

Builders and mortgage economists expect the slowdown to last several more months, but the Realtors Association predicts that the worst of the housing slump is over.

“Hopefully the fourth quarter was the bottom of this current business cycle,” the Realtors’ chief economist, David Lereah, said in a statement. “When we get the figures for this spring, I expect to see a discernable improvement in both sales and prices.”

Housing prices were down in more than half the cities the Realtors surveyed in the fourth quarter.

The biggest drops were in Florida cities, including the Sarasota housing market, which was down 18 percent, and Palm Bay, down 17 percent from the fourth quarter of 2005.

Atlantic City, N.J., had the greatest price hike, up almost 26 percent from a year earlier.

In Texas, the biggest price decline among the cities the Realtors surveyed was 3.9 percent in Dallas, where the median stood at $144,300 at year-end. Prices were also down slightly in Corpus Christi.

The Austin housing market had the greatest price increase, 4.9 percent.

Texas did enjoy the nation’s third-highest increase in pre-owned home sales during the fourth quarter. Demand for home mortgage loans in the state is always fairly strong.