TEXAS HOUSING MARKET
HEADED FOR A RECESSION,
BUT FOR HOW LONG? Johnnie Morine With the stay at home orders still in effect, thousands of Texans are doing well to adjust to life. Nonetheless, a good number are the people still scrambling to cover expenses with incomes that were cut off. Housing and real estate experts now say that it is hard to predict what the parallel public health and economic crises will do to the home values and sales. The economy is hard pressing on brakes, and the home builders are potentially facing the greatest fallout in business in a decade. This is a huge concern for North Texas, which has been at the forefront in single-family construction and sales. ”As you would expect, there has been a slowdown in the traffic counts of prospective buyers,” said Ted Wilson, a principal with Dallasbased housing analyst Residential Strategies. ”While there have been some sales cancellations due to job loss and economic and stock market concerns, they have been minimal thus far.” A lot could, however, happen, between now and when the twin trouble lasts.
24 l
”We definitely will have a slowdown, but the question is how much and how long,” said Scott Norman, executive director of the Texas Association of Builders. This is a sudden twist of events, especially in one of the most dynamic real estate markets in the country. Data from the Texas Realtors show that the state of Texas had so far had five consecutive years breaking the record in terms of the number of houses sold and the median prices. To add, the Texas homebuilding industry had been very solid too, and no other state had more building permits in 2019, according to the Census Data records. So far, the pandemic has not so much interfered with the demand for moderate-priced homes, which, according to Wilson, is still good. ”Many have pushed the pause button with regard to new acquisition due to the uncertainty of the entitlement process within the municipalities [permitting and zoning] as well as the uncertainty of the duration of this disruption,” Wilson said. ”While Wall Street has THE POWER IS NOW MAGAZINE | APRIL 2020
