D/FW upscale areas pulling out of housing drop

A tale of six cities

Jon Boyd, Oct 19, 10.

The depressed housing market does not apply to all areas of the Dallas-Fort Worth area, according to Steve Brown of the Dallas Morning News. Home sales are up sharply in the “Park Cities” of Highland Park and University Place, located near Southern Methodist University, just north of downtown Dallas, according to the story. Other areas with rising home sales are North Dallas and Southlake, an upscale suburb north of Fort Worth and northwest of D/FW Airport.

Meanwhile, home sales are down in three humble suburbs well to the south of I-635: Cedar Hill, DeSoto, and Lancaster.

The difference in the markets are the price points and who has the cash, according to the Dallas Morning News story:

The housing downturn has lost its hold on the Dallas area’s priciest neighborhoods.

Home sales in the affluent Park Cities area are up 41 percent so far this year – the first year-over-year increase in more than four years.

Sales are also strikingly higher in North Dallas – up 28 percent – and in Westlake, where pre-owned home purchases through the first nine months of 2010 are running a third higher than in the same period last year.

The inventory of homes for sale in these higher-priced neighborhoods has also fallen.

But at the other end of the spectrum, where there’s more affordable housing and lots of distressed properties to pick from, the home sector shakeout roils on.

Sales this year are down 25 percent in DeSoto , 17 percent in Cedar Hill and 16 percent in Lancaster.

Overall sales are down about 4 percent in the 45 residential districts where The Dallas Morning News tracks housing market conditions each quarter.

Median prices in North Texas are up about 2 percent this year from 2009, according to statistics from the Real Estate Center at Texas A&M University and North Texas Real Estate Information Systems.

With sales still down and the economy just huffing along, why are high-end homes taking off? What do affluent buyers know that the rest of North Texas homebuyers haven’t figured out?

“Those that have money are buying because they think this may definitely be the time in terms of pricing,” said Dr. James Gaines, an economist at the Real Estate Center. “And a lot of people who have money can’t figure out where else to put it.

“They’re looking around and thinking in the long run they might just as well put their money in a house they can live in and enjoy.”