Houston Finally Beats Dallas in New Home Sales, Becoming the State’s Real Estate Champ

It’s official — when it comes to the Lone Star State, Houston is home sweet home. Space City has finally officially overtaken Dallas as the state’s leader in new home sales.

In June, Houston surpassed Dallas by 24 houses, according to HomesUSA.com. It may be a small difference, but Houston hit an impressive record of 1,388 new home sales on a 12-month rolling average.

It’s a considerable upset, given that Dallas-Fort Worth had been the top market in Texas since December of 2017. Dallas sold 1,364 houses last month.

The owner of HomesUSA.com, Ben Caballero, believes the fact Houston is killing it despite the historic storms that tormented the city are a testament to its strength.

“The resilience of Houston shines through in its housing numbers when you consider how strongly it has bounced back from the impact of Hurricane Harvey. And Dallas-Fort Worth’s new home sales market remains a juggernaut,” Caballero says in a statement.

Meanwhile, real estate agent Heidi Dugan of Greenwood King Properties believes that the hurricane has not had much of an impact, at least not in broad strokes.

“I haven’t seen that at all. People aren’t paying attention to Hurricane Harvey in terms of Houston as a whole, they just don’t want to be where it flooded,” Dugan tells PaperCity.

The realtor sees certain areas of Houston booming in today’s climate thanks to their elevation.

“The Heights is booming a lot because of the name — it’s high up. And because of the restaurants. West University is booming, it’s always booming, and it had very little flooding. The elevation is higher and it has exemplary schools,” Dugan notes.

“Memorial is down, Bellaire is down. I think that’s because of all the flooding.”

The agent is not surprised that Houston has overtaken Dallas with the city’s growing reputation.

“Houston is just a great city,” Dugan says. “There are all of these articles saying it’s the best city to live in. I think Houston is friendlier, it’s an easier place to move and get adjusted to when people move here from other places.

“It’s a much easier place to do that than Dallas.”

Home sales in The Bayou City rose for five months in a row, were slightly elevated in Austin but were down in San Antonio and Dallas.

When you look at those, the four biggest markets in Texas dropped from a combined 4,001 new homes sold in May to 3,895 last month.

Pending sales in Houston for June looked like 1,229, according to the 12-month rolling average. In May, the number of pending sales came in at 1,316.

It’s also important that the average home price in Houston for last month was $358,810, a notable dip from $360,642 in May.

“I think it’s the uncertainty,” Dugan notes. “Markets never like uncertainty. People like to say we’re not dependent on oil. But oil drives the Houston market and oil really does make a difference in our economy in Houston, whether or not we like to say it.”

The average new home price in Dallas and Fort Worth came in at $373,960, with Austin averaging $367,041 and San Antonio $297,387 in June.