New-home sales in the Houston area rose for the fourth straight month in May, but the market could be tightening as the number of pending sales continued to decline, a new report showed.
Sales of new homes in Houston edged up to a record 1,370 in May based on a 12-month rolling average, according to HomesUSA.com, which compiles a monthly index based on data from the Houston Association of Realtors and other Multiple Listing Services. The sales are up from 12-month rolling average of 1,364 in April.
"The Houston new home market is strong today — it's catching back up to equal Dallas in fact," Ben Caballero, owner of HomesUSA.com, said in an announcement.
The Dallas-Fort Worth metro area logged 1,371 new homes sales in May. Austin registered 689 new home sales, while San Antonio logged 532.
Prices for new homes in the Houston region ticked up to a rolling average of $360,739 in May, compared to $375,695 for Dallas-Fort Worth, $369,096 for Austin and $296,670 for San Antonio.
For Texas, pending new-home sales were down for the sixth straight month in Houston, Dallas-Fort Worth, Austin and San Antonio, the state's largest new-home markets.
The Houston region's tally of pending new-home sales sunk to a 12-month rolling average of 1,197 in May, down from 1,293 in April.
"Builders in Texas saw record new-home sales and slightly higher home prices in May," Caballero said. "But they did not experience any real improvement in the pace of new-home sales homes, and the drop in pending new home sales looks like a dark cloud on an otherwise bright horizon."
