According to an article in the Dallas Morning News, the housing sales continue to drop as foreclosures glut the market and potential buyers move cautiously in the turbulent market.
The article said:
The nationwide housing recession finally caught up with North Texas in 2008. Prices were down in most Dallas neighborhoods, and across the board, median home sales prices in the area dropped 3 percent from 2007, according to statistics from North Texas Real Estate Information Systems and Texas A&M University’s Real Estate Center. Pre-owned home sales fell 14 percent in North Texas in 2008 compared with 2007. But they fell 32 percent in Northwest Dallas, 28 percent in North Dallas and 26 percent in Far North Dallas. And while overall home listing inventories in North Texas add up to about a six-month supply of unsold houses, several areas have more than a 10-month supply, including North Dallas and the Park Cities.
Fewer homes sold means less people need to be employed in the real estate market. Could this decline in home sales mean another round of job losses in the real estate market and other industries dependent upon it? For the past 10 years or more, the booming housing market has been the main catalyst of our economic growth, now with the rise of foreclosures, it seems to be the catalyst of our decline.
Dallas-Fort Worth residents have benefited greatly from the housing market; but with foreclosures and bankruptcy closing in we need to be prepared for the worst, including more job losses which in turn will create more foreclosures and of course more bankruptcies.