There is little doubt that home prices nationally are sinking faster than the Cowboys. But the one thing that no one has been able to identify is what’s going on here – where we live. In the past month, I’ve seen these headlines about Dallas home prices and sales: “Dallas-Fort Worth foreclosures rising,” “Pre-owned home sales drop 33 percent,” “New report shows rise in Dallas-area home prices,” and “U.S. new home sales fall to slowest pace in 18 years.”
Which is why we devised the Advocate Home Price Snapshot, which tracks the average home sale price in the 23 ZIP codes where we do magazines (and a huge, massive tip o’ the cyber hat to Coldwell Baker’s Ron Burch, who assembled the numbers). No need to try and wade through figures and statistics and try to make sense of a national or regional study; just look for your ZIP code. Can’t get much more local than that.
I wrote about this in more depth in my January column. The news in Lakewood and East Dallas isn’t bad, compared to the rest of of the country. But much of this neighborhood had its first real declines this decade, based on the difference between the 2007 and 2008 numbers. There were variations, of course, and the drop didn’t hold true for every ZIP, but I think we are seeing a trend.
The big winners? Lake Highlands, which is probably about flight to affordability, and Preston Hollow, where three already pricey ZIPs showed double-digit increases.
