Will Fort Worth housing prices budge? What to expect with mortgage rates, more inventory
For many aspiring homeowners, house hunting in Fort Worth since 2020 has been a tale of abundant stress and limited options.
Homebuilders are struggling to pump out properties to satiate surging demand. Interest rate spikes jacked up the cost of mortgages, straining the budgets of prospective buyers and dissuading current owners from putting their properties on the market.
The most tangible result of these trends has been gushing home prices: the median Fort Worth home sells for roughly $100,000 more today than it did five years ago.
But some of the pressure points have seemed to ease as of late.
Mortgage rates have slid from a two-decade peak of 7.79% in late October 2023, oscillating in recent months between 6.08 and 6.84%. Some experts anticipate imminent interest rate cuts may nudge mortgage rates down further.
“With stabilized rates and the possibility of lower rates on the horizon, buyers and sellers can expect an entirely new market landscape over the next year—one unlike anything we’ve seen before,” Blake Berry, president of the Greater Fort Worth Association of Realtors, said in a statement.
There are other glimmers of hope for buyers. Fort Worth’s housing inventory — a measurement of how long it would take to sell the city’s existing supply of homes — held at 3.7 months in October, according to the latest housing market data compiled by the Realtors association.
Roughly 6.5 months of inventory, experts say, represents a “balanced market,” when the number of homes available for purchase matches the appetite of consumers. Anything below the 6.5-month mark signals a better climate for sellers — there is far more demand for homes than supply.
But do these shifts herald a significant change in home prices? It’s unclear, if not unlikely.
Fort Worth’s booming population will sustain a steady demand for homes; failure to build quickly (and diversely) will keep prices high.
Higher mortgage rates tend to correlate with higher home prices, but the connection, researchers find, is weak. After all, lower mortgage rates lure more potential homebuyers into the market, fueling demand.
Median home prices in Fort Worth, now $327,995, according to the Realtors association, declined 0.6% compared to last year. Prices across Tarrant County actually rose 2.1% year-on-year, to $347,000.
This story was originally published November 22, 2024 at 11:47 AM.
