Dallas home price gains were the highest in the nation last month !!! (Plano: insurance, new home)

[rantanamo]

Originally Posted by Gree Mountain

Homes in certain East Dallas neighborhoods and the northern Dallas suburbs have almost reached the price of similar homes in Boston suburbs such as Newton, Concord, and Winchester. Even with state and local taxes in Massachusetts, homes in the Boston metro are a better value than homes in the Metroplex. The Boston suburbs mentioned have far superior schools, better services, and proximity to more cultural amenities and desirable outdoors. Dallas can compete with the coastal metros and Chicago primarily because housing costs have been relatively low. If this changes, there is trouble for Dallas.

Those houses are still in the city and not suburbs

[J.Thomas]

So this jump is maybe due to shortage??

[bencronin04]

Originally Posted by J.Thomas

So this jump is maybe due to shortage??

The "jump" is due to a lot of things. Low interest rates, "affordable" housing, job market, multiple relocation's of national HQ's to the DFW area.

[J.Thomas]

Originally Posted by bencronin04

The "jump" is due to a lot of things. Low interest rates, "affordable" housing, job market, multiple relocation's of national HQ's to the DFW area.

Obamacrib!!!

[Rakin]

Originally Posted by BigDGeek

Have you tried getting a concrete pour done recently, or gone to HD or Lowe's to shop for bags of concrete? The price increases are VERY apparent.

Getting any type of contractor right now is near impossible and you'll pay a premium.

[Johnhw2]

Higher prices are bad for owners? So declining prices are better for them? Need to experience a drop in prices to see the falsehood in this short term view.

If higher property taxes from rising prices are a big issue you probably bought more house than you are comfortable owning. A vast majority of owners will be sellers some day and benefit more than they are harmed by higher prices if they didn't buy over their head.

Tax authorities should re plenish reserve funds for years when lower taxes occur with decreasing property values then they should adjust tax rtes down prudently.

[Beardown91737]

Yes if your property tax can continue to rise faster than your income, it can cause a hardship. Reportedly part of the inspiration for Prop 13 in California was increases in taxes for retirees who had stayed in paid for (or nearly so) homes.

I don't know about telling people on the internet that they bought more house than they are comfortable owning. When you are young and starting out, you have to start somewhere, and it shoudn't have to be a dumpy neighborhood where you get stuck in a bad school district with an unsellable house. Younger people sometimes need to stretch in order to get into an area they can stay in. With a market like this one was, you don't get enough value appreciation to allow you to move in three years and recoup your closing cost and selling agent's commission.

There really won't be any force making North Texas housing prices equalize with NY, CA, Chicago, and New England over the next 50-60 years. There is lots of vacant land, even in Plano and Frisco, and at the same time, building is going on to the north of those places, which is still a reasonable commute to employment in Plano. There are no geographical constraints like oceans and mountains. No state lines for 60 miles. Not the kind of governmental restrictions that would keep a suburb from building a school or a hospital just to revive the population of endangered pests, weeds, and rodents. Just a free market ready to meet demand.

Originally Posted by Austrian2

Instead of eating up land and causing traffic nightmares, builders should get incentives from Dallas for remodeling existing homes and reviving the core area.

Where is the core city? Didn't it eat up land?

Is North Dallas part of the core city? Is Far North Dallas? If they are, then so is Carrollton and FB. If not, then, should they never have been built because there could have been more vertical housing to raise your kids in the core city? Is Fort Worth a core city or should it be razed and returned to pristine earth-land and everyone move to Dallas, and while we are at it, shouldn't everyone in the US move back to Jamestown and Plymouth Rock so we don't waste pristine land for Dallas and Chicago and even NYC?

[Redriver65]

What the heck is gentrification? Using words like that is adding to the cost of homes.

[RJ312]

Originally Posted by Beardown91737

There are no geographical constraints like oceans and mountains. No state lines for 60 miles. Not the kind of governmental restrictions that would keep a suburb from building a school or a hospital just to revive the population of endangered pests, weeds, and rodents. Just a free market ready to meet demand.

I look at something like this as a rather thorny issue. I believe that unfettered growth has consequences.

We have a good problem in DFW. People actually want to live here, unlike Detroit or Flint, MI. We have a pro-business climate here with many Fortune 500 HQs in the area. The no state income tax is huge.

Natural resources are finite though. We have had water issues in recent years. The recent rains are just a reprieve in a long term problem.

I am intrigued with the idea of an urban growth boundary. Cities like Portland, OR and Boulder, CO have had them in attempts to control sprawl. I think this region needed some modification of this idea many years ago. Cities like Frisco and McKinney have grown too fast. Look at these stats.

Frisco:
1990 Population: 6,138
2015 Population: 149,140 (Demographics)

McKinney:
1990: 21,283
2015: 155.142 (http://www.mckinneytexas.org/DocumentCenter/View/497)

That's just insane growth. Some form of an urban growth boundary would have prevented this and prevented all of the pretty prairie land in that area from being torn up. With reasonable growth, Frisco should have had a population like maybe 30,000 today and McKinney maybe 50,000. It would have been much better if the growth in this region would have been concentrated over less land mass. I would have rather seen more infill growth and building upwards in the urban core (which is happening, there's always some high rise under construction around Uptown/Downtown). As urban development pushes further and further north towards Oklahoma, older neighborhoods tend to suffer due to neglect as well. Not to mention that there's also the risk of tornado damage the further north with building as this is at the southern edge of tornado alley.

[Redriver65]

The psychological jolt of a 35% y2y hike in property taxes is a major shock. I hope everyone has their homestead exemption in place by now. When you consider how much more home is afforded in a lower property tax state, it stings a little. I'm 45 miles out and being affected.