The U.S. economy is heading into an almost certain recession this year, and for the housing market, the recession is here.
"We're like a canary in the coal mine," Kelly said."If you want to look where the broader economy goes, you can kind of look six months ahead and see where housing is. When the rest of the economy is like, ‘We're in a recession now,’ housing will likely start coming out. We saw this exact same thing happen during the Great Recession as well."in December from their peak in June, according to data from North Texas Real Estate Information Systems.
“The Dallas Fort Worth area is projected to be one of the top real estate markets in 2023,” Kelly said. “That’s relatively speaking, but again, you'd rather be here because of the strong job growth. It just trickles into everything that we do in housing as well.
“As mortgage rates have gone from about 3% to as high as 7%, all housing activity has come to a standstill,” he said. “Buyers have disappeared, and sellers who refinanced their homes and have 3% mortgage rates aren't going to trade up into a 7% mortgage rate. So it's a frozen housing market, and this is the big reason why, especially with the buying side.”Dougherty, like Kelly, doesn’t forecast a housing price crash nationally or in DFW.