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​​​COLLEGE STATION, Tex. (Real Estate Center) – Registration is open for the Annual Outlook for Texas Land Markets conference. This is the 29^th year the popular event has been offered by the Real Estate Center at Texas A&M University. 

The conference is April 25 and 26 at the Omni Hotel at the Colonnade, 9821 Colonnade Blvd. in San Antonio. 

To register, go to the conference webpage​. The website also has information on a limited number of special-rate rooms reserved at the Omni Hotel and Staybridge Suites. 

Conference-only registration is $250 until March 26 and $275 thereafter. At the door, it's $300. 

A special four-hour legal update from the Texas Real Estate Commission is available after the conference concludes on Friday. The conference-plus-legal-update cost is $300 until March 26, $325 after that date, and $350 at the door. 

The conference provides information on a variety of legal, economic, social, and natural resources issues influencing current land market dynamics.

​For more information, contact Cheryl Harford, meeting planner, at charford@tamu.edu or 979-845-2037.

​COLLEGE STATION,Tex. (Real Estate Center) – ​Texas homeowners with a mortgage pay an average of $18,156 per year in housing costs. Homeowner costs, however, vary depending on where the home is located. 

Data compiled by the Real Estate Center at Texas A&M University show Frisco homeowners have the highest costs in the Lone Star State. Annual housings costs in the North Texas city are $30,936.

Residents of The Woodlands ($29,016), Sugar Land ($28,044), Flower Mound ($27,084), Cedar Park ($25,716), and McKinney ($25,008) pay some of the highest costs in the 59 cities studied.

At $13,104 per year, Brownsville homeowners incur the lowest housing costs. Other Texas cities where costs are less than $14,000 are Pharr ($13,824), Harlingen ($13,812), Wichita Falls ($13,728), Abilene ($13,704), Killeen ($13,608), and Bryan ($13,572).

The Center research is based on 2017 data on median homeowner costs, median homeowner incomes, and median home prices from the U.S. Census Bureau's American Community Survey (ACS).

Among all U.S. states, Texas ranks:

• 18^th in average annual homeowner costs,
• seventh in terms of homeowner costs as a percentage of home prices,
• tenth in amount of property taxes, and
• fifth in property tax as a percentage of home prices.

“The ACS defines homeowner costs as the sum of payments for mortgages, deeds of trust, contracts to purchase, or similar debts on the property; real estate taxes; fire, hazard, and flood insurance; and utilities," said Center Research Economist Dr. Ali Anari.

“Property taxes imposed by cities, counties, and school districts are important components of the state's housing costs given that Texas does not impose a state income tax and relies mainly on sales and property taxes for public finance."

Texas' median 2017 property tax was $3,724. The median property tax accounted for 20.5 percent of the state's median homeowner costs, ranking Texas eighth highest in the U.S. The median property tax as a percentage of median home value indicates an effective property tax rate of 1.88 percent, which is fifth nationally.

Property taxes as a percent of housing costs are highest in Cedar Park (26.9 percent). The Woodlands, Mansfield, College Station, Pearland, and McKinney follow in that order. Odessa has the smallest percentage of homeowner costs followed by Longview, Mesquite, Tyler, Harlingen, and Beaumont. The statewide average is 20.5 percent.

​For more on Texas housing costs and city rankings, see “Contrasting Costs: Location-Based Differences in Homeowner Expenses."

​​COLLEGE STATION, Tex. (Real Estate Center) – The Real Estate Center at Texas A&M University has earned two Silver Quill awards from the International Association of Business Communicators (IABC) Southern Region.
 
IABC Southern Region announced the winners at its Connect18 Conference in Nashville, Tenn. The Center had three entries.
 ​
The Real Estate Red Zone podcast won an Award of Excellence in the audio/visual category.
 
The Center's Annual Report + Calendar earned an Award of Merit in the publications category.
 
The annual competition recognizes creative work by professional communicators in 13 U.S. states, the Caribbean, and Latin America.
 
Since 1979, the Real Estate Center has won more than 200 local, regional, national, and international awards for communications expertise, including 33 Silver Quills and four Gold Quills, IABC's highest international award.
 
Funded primarily by Texas real estate licensee fees, the Real Estate Center was created by the state legislature to meet the needs of many audiences, including the real estate industry, instructors, researchers, and the public. The Center is part of Mays Business School at Texas A&M University.

​COLLEGE STATION, Tex. (Real Estate Center) – Texans have a reliable way to track home price appreciation with the Real Estate Center at Texas A&M University's new Texas Home Price Index (THPI). 

Made possible through a research agreement with the Texas Association of Realtors, the free index tracks real home price appreciation in the state's four big metros and a handful of mid-sized ones. In addition, it provides indexes by price tier for some of the larger Texas markets. 

The THPI uses repeats sales analysis, which measures the change in sales price from multiple sales of the same house. It uses real sales data collected from an improved and expanded database.

“Repeat sales analysis takes another step to isolate true home price appreciation," said Center Senior Data Analyst Joshua Roberson. “Ideally, the analysis includes only homes that have had no or minimal physical changes to focus on market-driven price appreciation."

This method has a number of advantages over other types of analysis. First, home sales are screened to identify properties that have sold at least twice, helping with the issue of changing market mix from period to period.

Second, looking at properties that have sold multiple times shifts the focus to the change in price since the last sale of a specific property. This helps capture appreciation.

While a handful of other repeat sales analyses are available, the Center's index is unique because it not limited by mortgage data or public housing records.

Coverage includes quarterly indexes for Austin-Round Rock, Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington, Houston-The Woodlands-Sugar Land, and San Antonio-New Braunfels as well as Amarillo and El Paso. Variations of DFW include Dallas-Plano-Irving and Fort Worth-Arlington metropolitan divisions.

The index is available for free at www.recenter.tamu.edu/data/home-price-index/.

Funded primarily by Texas real estate licensee fees, the Real Estate Center was created by the state legislature in 1971 to meet the needs of many audiences, including the real estate industry, instructors, researchers and the general public. The Center is part of Mays Business School at Texas A&M University.​

COLLEGE STATION, Tex. (Real Estate Center) – Rural land price data for Alabama, Louisiana, and Mississippi are now on the Real Estate Center's website.

Users can access analyses of prices and tract sizes regionally and statewide going back to fourth quarter 2005. Statewide analyses of land market trends are also available.

“We have the only data of its kind for those states," said Center Research Economist Dr. Charles Gilliland. “It's a public service we provide at no cost."

Center Assistant Research Scientist Dr. Erin Kiella said many other publicly available land data use responses from surveys. The data are often unable to capture the entire market and may be biased. 

“Our data aggregate actual market data and therefore truly represent the local markets," Kiella said. “They can help potential buyers and sellers of land get an idea of market trends taking place either on a regional or statewide basis."

Gilliland said the reports indicate past general conditions in these markets and do not represent prices or values of any particular farm or ranch.

“They do provide a general guide to land market price levels and size trends," he said.

This information is in addition to rural land data for Texas, its regions, and its land market areas going back to fourth quarter 1971. 

Land data can be downloaded for free on the Center's website.​