DFW home construction picking up, but still far behind demand

Strong sales have home builders ramping up construction.

Home starts in Dallas-Fort Worth increased by 25 percent in the second quarter, according to a new report. And if rains had not soaked North Texas this spring, work on as many as 2,000 additional homes would be underway, said Ted Wilson with Residential Strategies in Dallas.

“Persistently rainy weather, especially in May, has delayed the construction process,” Wilson said. “In June, they’ve been scrambling. Closings scheduled for late in the year are being pushed into 2016. Builders are working aggressively to play catch-up this summer with a surge of new starts in June.”

Home builders started construction on 7,533 new homes between April and June, up from 6,018 in the second quarter of 2014 and 5,761 in the first three months of this year.

The building surge pushed the annual start rate to 25,868 homes for the year. And the quarterly number of starts is nearly double the number recorded — 3,803 — at the end of the second quarter of 2011, when the housing market was just starting to recover.

Closings increased in the quarter by 9 percent, to 6,026 homes, compared with 5,524 homes in the year-ago quarter, the report said.

At the end of June, 13,413 homes were under construction, an increase of 1,836 homes from the end of March, Residential Strategies reports. Of that, 3,730 homes were under construction in Fort Worth, 908 more than at the end of June 2014.

“The unprecedented rain pattern has affected every builder in the DFW area, creating a frustrating situation,” Wilson said. “If the weather improves in the next three months, we expect to see further growth in the start rate.”

Further complicating matter, the rainy weather also impacted lot development, Residential Strategies said.

At the end of June, 25,389 lots under development in North Texas, including 7,688 in Fort Worth.

This story was originally published July 6, 2015 at 11:17 AM with the headline "DFW home construction picking up, but still far behind demand."