New month, same story: How mortgage rates are affecting Fort Worth housing market
Spring and summer are typically the busiest months for the real estate market.
But that’s not the case in 2023.
Buyers and sellers are still waiting out mortgage rates, which reached 7.14% as of June 15.
“Homeowners who want to move are deciding to wait because they are locked in at 3 to 4% and they don’t want to buy at 7%,” said Bart Calahan, president of the Greater Fort Worth Association of Realtors.
As a result, closed sales were down 1.4% from this time last year. On average, houses in Fort Worth spent 24 more days on the market in May than they did in 2022, according to a housing report from the Greater Fort Worth Association of Realtors.
Home prices have inched up slightly. In Fort Worth. the median home price in May was $340,000, a 1.1% increase from April but 7.4% down from a year ago.
According to a recent report from the National Association of Realtors, middle-income buyers can afford only 23% of listings in the current market; five years ago, this group could afford half.
Furthermore, there aren’t many homes available.
May was the third month in a row that Fort Worth had two months of inventory. It’s almost double what it was a year ago, but it’s still a far cry from a balanced market, which is 6.5 months, according to the Texas Real Estate Research Center at Texas A&M University.
