That was the theme of a Real Estate & Economic Outlook session put on by the North Dallas Chamber of Commerce held Wednesday at Southern Methodist University.
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The U.S. economy is heading into an almost certain recession this year, and for the housing market, the recession is here.
But a national recession won’t wallop Dallas-Fort Worth as hard as it does other areas of the country, and that goes for the North Texas housing market as well as the broader economy.
That was the theme of a Real Estate & Economic Outlook session put on by the North Dallas Chamber of Commerce held Wednesday at Southern Methodist University.
Multiple speakers said the economic mantra should be “Stay Alive til 2025.”
But the North Texas housing market should correct itself well before that time, said Chris Kelly, president and CEO of Ebby Halliday Cos., who spoke on the housing market and moderated the event.
“We’re like a canary in the coal mine,” Kelly said. “If you want to look where the broader economy goes, you can kind of look six months ahead and see where housing is. When the rest of the economy is like, ‘We’re in a recession now,’ housing will likely start coming out. We saw this exact same thing happen during the Great Recession as well.”
Dallas-Fort Worth home prices were down 10% in December from their peak in June, according to data from North Texas Real Estate Information Systems. The median DFW-area home price in December was $390,000.
The North Texas housing market, like much of the country’s, soared in 2022 in terms of sales and prices, then cooled quickly as ever-increasing interest rates took their toll, Kelly said. This year will likely be a mirror image of 2022, starting slowly, then accelerating in the second half of the year, he said.
Home prices nationally won’t collapse like they did during the Great Recession, in large part because lending standards are far stricter and the supply of homes on the market is tighter than in that period, Kelly said. But prices will continue to decline nationally and, to a lesser extent, in Dallas-Fort Worth, he said.
“The Dallas Fort Worth area is projected to be one of the top real estate markets in 2023,” Kelly said. “That’s relatively speaking, but again, you’d rather be here because of the strong job growth. It just trickles into everything that we do in housing as well.”
Charles Dougherty, vice president and economist for Wells Fargo, said he expects the Federal Reserve to hike interest rates by a total of 75 basis points in three 25-point raises in the first half of this …….
