Statewide update: Market’s slower, but still pretty fast
By amy e. lemen, Consumer columnist 

Your neighbor might be upset that his house is still on the market after a few months, wondering what to do. Should he lower the price? Take it off the market and put it back out there in a few months? Or, if it’s an option, simply hang onto it for now?To be perfectly honest, a few months on the market in the Lone Star State is nothing to be alarmed about when you consider that, in many markets across the country and on the east and west coasts in particular it’s not unusual for homes to sit for a year or more. And we are talking about homes that are reasonably priced not million-dollar properties.

Altos Research, a blog that specializes in real-time real estate research, posted in its National Real Estate Report (issued in March) that central cities like Denver and Dallas continue to outperform the coastal bubblevilles. By outperform, I mean housing prices were essentially flat. Dallas never climbed as high as say, San Diego, so it has less to fall, says primary blogger Mike Simonsen, Altos co-founder and CEO.

That’s still the case statewide in Texas, with months of inventory about on par with the height of 2003 Texas housing boom. For example, consider the chart below, taken from data compiled by the Real Estate Center at Texas A&M University.

When you compare the statewide numbers for the first six months of the year (the most current stats available as of publication), the discrepancies are relatively minor.

   Compared to other markets across the country, Texas is still sitting pretty in many ways. By comparison, there are entire condo buildings in Miami that are empty with not a single unit sold, and single-family homes in various phases of construction across Florida and Arizona, all shells waiting to be completed.We are not seeing that in Texas, nor do forecasters expect to see that degree of downturn. That’s because, according to Jim Gaines, Ph.D., research economist for the Real Estate Center at Texas A&M, we’ve got a lot of positive economic factors going for us, including affordability, reasonable cost of living, low overall cost of doing business, ample employment opportunities, and the reason why a lot of us are Texans, a great lifestyle.

Events and circumstances point toward a Texas-sized boom between now and 2030, says Gaines. The state’s population and economy, as well as its housing and commercial real estate markets are poised to explode in volume and prices. Job growth is expected to be stimulated by overall U.S. economic growth and enhanced by Texas’s employment-friendly characteristics.

Austin’s Dugg Tankersley echoes the positive outlook of many experts, putting the current Texas real estate market in perspective. We’ve been doing 90 miles per hour for so long, he says. Now we’re at 65 miles per hour, but that’s still pretty fast.

Month

Months of inventory 2008

Months of inventory 2003
 January  5.9  5.8
 February  6.1  5.8
 March  6.4  6.0
 April  6.6  6.2
 May  6.9  6.4
 June  6.8  6.5