DFW home starts up 32 percent

DALLAS-FORT WORTH – The North Texas area’s hot housing market is kicking off the summer with big gains.

North Texas home starts rose by almost a third in second quarter as builders hustled to keep up with buyer demand and sales of pre-owned homes were 12 percent higher in June than a year earlier.

DFW home builders started almost 6,000 homes in 2Q — the highest quarterly home building total in this area in five years, according to a new report from Metrostudy Inc.

“I think we are still in the early stages of a recovery,” said David Brown, regional director of Metrostudy’s Dallas-Fort Worth office. “We’re still at almost 60 percent below where we were building at the peak."

Brown said he anticipates that builders will start about 22,000 houses in the DFW area this year, compared with fewer than 18,000 starts in 2012.

Local builders sold 5,147 houses in the three months ending with June — a 25 percent increase from second quarter 2012. Builders are also having a tough time finding ready, affordable home construction sites.

The number of North Texas houses listed for sale with real estate agents was down 19 percent last month from June 2012, according to the Real Estate Center at Texas A&M University and North Texas Real Estate Information Systems.

There is just over a three-month supply of homes listed for sale with real estate agents in the more than 50-county area.

Real estate agents in June sold 8,708 pre-owned single-family homes in North Texas. Median preowned home sales prices in June rose 13 percent to a record $185,820. So far in 2013, median home sales prices in North Texas are 10 percent higher than the first half of 2012.