What's Causing The Surge In New Home Prices In North Texas?
FORT WORTH (CBSDFW.COM) - New home prices are skyrocketing across Dallas-Fort Worth, adding to the historic surge in costs and demand for hopeful homebuyers.
Dallas native Samantha Rivas says she and her husband are expecting their first baby and had decided a new built in Royse City was going to be their next move.
Rivas says the problem was in just a matter of days the price started going up.
Rivas said, "Drastically, within like a two week span. It probably went up like 10-thousand dollars," and it kept going up from there according to her.
The cause for the surge according to industry experts is an unprecedented hike in materials cost.
The increase in those prices is being blamed on pandemic related production delays, tariff policies on imported materials, and an increase demand in buyers.
Phil Crone, the Executive Officer of the Dallas Builders Association, said newly- built homes are the hardest hit right now with material scarcity.
"Affordability has set this market apart over the last decade or more. I fear we are going to lose the golden goose if we don't address this issue," he said.
As an example, lumber is the one material that has seen the greatest increase.
"Lumber is about tripled from a year ago, and there are some big problems there with the tariffs that are attached to it still," Crone said.
Realtors and builders alike say they don't anticipate this trend to stop anytime soon, best case scenario they say is about another full year before seeing the cost of building materials stabilize along with the demand for it.
Stephanie Luster from Rogers Healy & Associates is Rivas's realtor.
She said the advice those looking to buy a newly-built home is straight forward right now, be prepared to pay a lot more or wait until the prices come down.
"I tell people you've got to be ready. If you really are serious about buying a home you have to be ready," said Luster.
Rivas and her husband decided to rent for at least another year, and their keeping their fingers crossed that the price surge will normalize by then.
"It was frustrating in the beginning, but I have hopes that this will change. I'm trying to stay optimistic at this point," said Rivas.
