The Dallas Housing Market Is Still Nuts - Dallas Observer

Marcia Todd

You will never afford this.

Maybe you moved here from some expensive city on the coast, lured by a job offer and the cheap rent. An apartment broker directed you to a new building with a really pretentious name, like, say, "Celebrity." But after spending a few months renting a cramped, thin-walled unit inside Celebrity, watching drunk people urinate in your luxury community pool, it becomes clear that renting in Dallas really isn't that great of a deal. Time to buy a house, right?

"The only thing that's being built is apartments. Apartment rents are ridiculously high," says Matt Watson, a Dallas real estate agent who works with buyers and sellers in Uptown and Oak Lawn. Facing those "ridiculously high" rents, Watson says people decide to buy as the logical next time. Then they get a bad surprise: all the other people exactly like them, also wanting to buy a house, competing for few available houses. "We're literally at more than a 10-year-low at inventory," Watson says.

See also: If You Make Less Than $28 an Hour, You Can't Afford Median Rent In Dallas, Says Zillow

In other words, the housing market here is still insane. Dallas Morning News' real estate reporter Steve Brown recently analyzed home prices and now has the exact percentagesshowing just how insane it's gotten. Average prices rose 12 percent from 2013 in 46 different areas, the News found, also citing the lack of supply as a major factor. The neighborhoods with the biggest price jumps are as Wilmer-Huchins, Southeast Dallas, Lancaster and Oak Cliff.

What this means for you, poor Dallas resident, is you will not live in a home anytime soon, unless you already own a home, in which case you'll have no problem selling it, but then end up homeless when you can't buy a new home. As is the case with most things in life, this problem will go away if you get more money. So keep your head up and go find some money, somewhere.

Meanwhile, the 2014 median rent here was a depressing $1,423.

By Amy Silverstein