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Lower Greenville Market Update for August 2008

By
Real Estate Agent with Keller Williams 0493555

The biggest news continues to be in the new construction part of our market. For those "old home" owners (homes built before 1975), prices are up, , days on market are down, inventory is down and the numbers are actually looking pretty balanced. Hopefully you know that Dallas has been doing much better than the national averages in terms of the housing slump. Its nice to see the old homes that are the backbone of the neighborhood holding their value.

Original Homes: Looking at this August snapshot, the market looks to be ideal for old homes owners. The average price is up about 2% over last month.  Days on market is down slightly from 143 days to 139 days. Of course, antyhign over 60 days is usually not good, but for our neighborhood where people are more prone to overpricing, its an improvement. The best news is that "Months of Inventory" is down to 5.2 months. Generally speaking, 4 or less is a seller's market and 7 or more is a buyer's market. So that puts us firmly in the middle as a balanced market.

Newer Construction: The market is reacting to the last several years of overpricing and adjustments are finally being made. Sold prices for new construction homes have decreased almost 10% in the last month reflecting the large number of builders who have gone through and made price reductions to their entire inventory. Pre-owned new construction has also responded by pricing more attractively. In the month of August, preowned new homes outsold never lived in home almost 3 to 1, even though the prices were within 5% of each other. This may reflect the fact that the preowned homes are likely to have more mature landscaping and more owner stylized finished out. (Note to builders: flat-white is not acceptable in a $650,000 home.) While new construction inventory level is just shy of 12 months, the "gently used" inventory is getting quite low at just over three months.

Condos: The Palomar (at Mockingbird/Central) just dropped about 20 new units onto the market this week. As a result, that will be skewing averages for a while. This month it pushed the average $/sqft for condo property to $198/ft which is fairly high for this area.

Lot Values: Ouch. They've fallen 10% in the last 6 months. I can count at least half a dozen lots in recent months that sold at $230K a year ago and are now selling at $205K or less. Zero lots sold this month, not a good thing. Now that the builders have found the ceiling at $700K, hopefully they will resume business with more realistic prices and not completely abandon the area. I'm not always a fan of new construction but we still have a lot of unsalvagable homes in our area that need to be replaced.

And Now for the Numbers:

  Total on Market Avg $/sqft DOM Sold In July Avg Sold Price Months Inventory

New Construction, Single Family (2006 or later)

35 $174.44 180 3 $546,833 11.7
New Construction Resales (after 1975) 27 $173.23 119 8 $535,863 3.4
Older Single Family (Pre 1975) 135 $187.1 139 26 $359,483 5.2
Condo/Townhome 35 $198.40 205 4 $230,725 8.8
MultiFamily 10 NA 208 1 $360,000 10
Lots / Teardowns 15 $25.07 215 0 NA NA

 The Typical Home

  Aug-06 Aug-07 Aug-08
M-Streets Tudor, 1800sqft, updated $361,000 $359,480 $452,330
New Construction, 3600sqft $635,000 $652,000 $635,000

Comments (1)

Steve Shatsky
Dallas, TX

Hi Darren... Great snapshot of the Lower Greenville market.  Just another example of why you are the "go-to agent" for this part of Dallas! 

Sep 05, 2008 11:40 AM