Dallas – Fort Worth Ranked 3rd Best Housing Market in Report
By STEVE BROWN / The Dallas Morning News
stevebrown@dallasnews.com
The Dallas-Fort Worth area is one of the top three housing markets in the country, according to a just-released economic report from the Brookings Institution.
The D-FW area ranked third among metro areas that have been the least affected by falling home prices.
Brookings researchers make these claims based on the Federal Housing Finance Agency’s quarterly House Price Index, which tracks values of homes mortgaged by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
By that measure, home prices in D-FW were up slightly in the first quarter compared with those in the first quarter of 2008.
Other research that includes all home sales shows that home prices here were down about 4 percent compared with those in the same period last year. But that’s still less than in most markets.
The housing report was part of a comprehensive nationwide study on the economic health of metropolitan areas nationwide.
Brookings found that 38 of the top 100 metro areas avoided home price declines over the last year, even as prices nationwide dipped 6 percent. Most of these metro areas also had below-average employment declines and are in less-affected parts of the Manufacturing Belt (Pennsylvania and upstate New York) and the Sun Belt (Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas and Louisiana).
Best U.S. Housing Markets:
- Houston
- Buffalo
- Dallas-Fort Worth
- Wichita
- Greenville, S.C.
Worst U.S. Housing Markets:
- Stockton, Calif.
- Las Vegas
- Modesto, Calif.
- Riverside, Calif.
- Cape Coral, Fla.
Source: Brookings Institution
