Housing boom bigger in Texas

TEXAS – With the advent of Texas’ booming housing market, real estate bidding wars are becoming more common. Prices of existing homes in Dallas and Houston are up more than at any time since the oil boom of the 1980s.

Home builders, caught off guard by the ferocity of demand, are struggling to recruit workers to complete houses.

The number of residential sales across the Lone Star State reached a record in second quarter 2013. The inventory of existing homes on the market in Houston and Dallas sank to about three months of supply in August, less than the U.S. level of 4.9 months and the lowest since at least 1990, according to data from the Real Estate Center at Texas A&M University.

The median home price rose 15 percent in Dallas and 14 percent in Houston in August from the previous year, according to the Real Estate Center’s data.

Texas isn’t just making up ground lost in the housing crash. The state’s home prices fell about 2.5 percent from a peak in 2007 to a trough in 2011, compared with a nationwide decline of 20 percent, according to the Federal Housing Finance Agency.

The S&P/Case-Shiller 20-city index shows that home prices remain 21 percent below their 2006 peak, while Dallas prices are 4 percent above their previous high.