My column in the January issue, which should start appearing on doorknobs this weekend, surprised me. I expected to find that our home prices have held up. What I didn’t expect to find was that they have held up remarkably well, especially given the blood-letting in the rest of the country. Plus, the news earlier this week that DFW-Arlington prices fell .1 percent annually (from the respected S&P/Case-Shiller index) makes our success that much more amazing.
The complete chart for the eight ZIP codes in East Dallas, Lakewood and Lake Highlands is here. The more I think about it, the more I’m convinced that we’ve benefited for two main reasons: First, foreclosure rates around here have remained low. Ron Burch of Coldwell Banker, who helped put the numbers together, reported an uptick in foreclosures in December, but that may have been an aberration. Second, since our home supply is limited, it’s almost impossible to overbuild. And overbuilding has caused many of the problems elsewhere in the Dallas area and in the rest of the country.
My hunch is that home prices here in 2008 won’t hold up this well if the rest of the economy continues to slow. But we should be able to avoid the 1980s-style meltdown that those of us who have lived here since then remember with fear and trepidation.
