Real Estate Update March 2018 Fort Worth Texas

March 2018 Market Update for Tarrant County

Welcome back! Good news bad news time.

The good news is it’s still a great time to sell your home here in the Fort Worth, TX area. The bad is that it may last much longer. Interest rates are rising and according to BankRate.com and about every podcast I’ve been listening too it’s expected interest rates will see 3 more rises of 0.25% this year.

Why is this significant?
For a few reasons. If interest rates go up 1% this year, a $250k house will now cost an additional $153 per month. This means the market you’re selling to is going to shrink. Now Dallas and Fort Worth have a huge lack of homes due to the influx of people. This may keep our prices up for the short term but within a year or two we should start to see a slow down in appreciation. If you’re looking to buy it might be a good idea to lock in your rate now. If you’re not sure what this means, give us a call.

What will be interesting to see is how millennials will take this as we have never seen rates higher than they currently are. Many of my clients that are looking to upgrade say that if this happens they may have to wait until they in a better position or until interest rates come back down. However, 4% is not the historical average, it’s much higher. I’m not an expert on how all things in the universe works but I do know that college debt is one of the largest debts that millennials now carry. It used to be mortgages. If we have a whole generation carrying school debt and rates go back to where they used to be, how will this generation afford to buy houses?

Housing Market

The housing market here in March is still very strong, this is the month we start to see an up tick in houses being listed with next month really starting the buying season. If you are looking to sell this year, the best time is going to be in the next 2.5 months.

We are currently below 2 months worth of inventory here in Tarrant county for homes under half a million. If you have any additional questions, please do give us a call or text!