Dallas Home Price Stability Among Best

Dallas Business Journal

Dallas home prices may be down 4.5 percent when comparing D-FW’s February home prices to the same period last year, but Dallas is still faring better than the rest of the nation, according to Standard & Poor’s latest S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price Indices.

S&P’s latest report also indicates Dallas home prices in February dropped 0.3 percent from the previous month.

The S&P report says in considering all of the data, Dallas has suffered the least in the nation, with the area’s home prices down only 11.1 percent from peak prices that were reached in June of 2007. Dallas’ price drops are relatively minor when compared to cities like Phoenix, which saw home prices drop 50.8 percent from their June 2006 peak.

When comparing year-over-year declines in February, the report says Dallas, Denver and Boston fared the best with their prices declining 4.5 percent, 5.7 percent and 7.2 percent, respectively.

Metropolitan areas in the Sunbelt are feeling the most heat in terms of rapidly declining home prices. Among those hurting the most are the cities of Phoenix, Las Vegas and San Francisco — all of which saw their home prices drop more than 30 percent when comparing February numbers to the same period last year.

Standard & Poor’s did report some positive news about the declines. The report concluded, “While the declines in residential real estate continued into February, we witnessed some deceleration in the rate of decline in some of the markets,” said David Blitzer, chairman of the Index Committee at Standard & Poor’s. “All 20 metro areas recorded a monthly decline in February, but 16 of the 20 metro areas saw an improvement in their monthly returns compared to January.”