North Texas home sales were 5% higher in February, with the most houses sold ever in the second month of any year.
And median home sales prices were close to an all-time high last month at $235,000 — up 13% from a year earlier, according to data from the Real Estate Center at Texas A&M University.
Real estate agents sold more than 6,900 preowned single-family homes through their multiple listing service in February, numbers from the North Texas Real Estate Information Systems found.
For the first two months of 2017, home sales are up about 3% and median sales prices are 13% higher than in the same period of land year.
"I think it's because of real demand from new jobs and growth from in migration," said Ted Wilson, a housing analyst with Dallas-based Residential Strategies Inc. "I'm hearing the last three or four weeks have been exceptionally strong in buyer traffic and sales.
"Yes, it keeps on going despite slightly higher mortgage rates," Wilson said. "It's definitely a strong spring market."
Last year real estate agents in North Texas for the first time sold more than 100,000 homes.
And while home finance costs have moved higher in the last few months, the increases so far haven't been enough to cool demand in the Dallas-Fort Worth area.
Some of the biggest sales increases have been for houses priced between $250,000 and $500,000, the latest data shows.
But sales of high-end properties are booming. In January and February real estate agents in North Texas sold 177 homes valued at $1 million or more — 64% more than in the first two months of 2016.
Less than a three-month supply of homes is listed for sale with area real estate agents. At the end of February, there were 16,609 single-family houses offered for sale in North Texas. That's 1% less than a year earlier.
The homes that sold in February in the roughly two dozen counties included in the survey had been on the market for an average of 48 days.
North Texas' hot housing market is seeing some of the largest price increases in the country.
In the last four years, the cost of a mid-priced DFW area home has shot up by more than 40%.
