Today the Federal Housing finance Agency released their property on Dallas area housing prices. The report said that housing prices in the Dallas area were up by 0.08%. You could easily call that flat.
Yesterday Standard & Poors/Case-Shiller report, the darlings of the press, came out and it said that prices were down in March by 5.6%.
Information from the Texas A&M Real Estate Center showed that the average price of a single family home was down by 8% in March.
Well is it down by 8%, or by 5.6% or up by 0.08%? the truth is that all of these reports are right and wrong. how can that be? If you want a detailed explanation take a look at my blog of May 2.
The truth of the matter is that the real estate market is very localized and by that I mean by neighborhood. there are areas that are down a little, areas that are flat, and there are even some areas that are up.
Please do not use Zillow to get an idea of prices. They really do not know. This afternoon I got a phone call from a lady in another city in Texas. She was considering moving to Dallas and had been looking up properties on Zillow. The house she called about is listed for $287,900 but Zillow said it was worth $500,000 and she could not understand why I was offering it so cheap! I had to explain to her the many problems with Zillow and why their methodology does not work in Texas.
If you really want to know what is happening to prices in the neighborhood you live in or are interested in buying in, you need to talk to a Realtor that is very familiar with that area. Otherwise you are just guessing!
