As the Texas housing market experiences an influx of new builds, homeowners are struggling to sell their homes and increasingly cutting prices to offload their properties.
As of Thursday morning, there were a total of 194,887 properties—including single- and multi-family homes, condos, lots and apartments—listed for sale on the online real estate marketplace Zillow in Texas by agents and owners. Some 35,179 of these properties have had a price reduction since first being listed.
All of the Lone Star State's five most populated cities reported price reductions. Fort Worth, one of the fastest-growing cities in the country counting a population of at least 900,000 residents, had a total of 2,831 properties listed for sale on Zillow, 625 of which had a price reduction. That means that the city had the highest rate in the state of listed properties with a price reduction, at 30 percent.
Dallas followed suit with 27 percent of homes listed for sale on Zillow having a price reduction, for a total of 811 out of 3,131. In Austin, 1,210 homes had a price reduction out of a total of 4,535 properties listed for sale on the real estate marketplace—a share of about 25 percent.
Houston had a rate of about 22 percent of homes with a price reduction, for 2,115 out of a total of 10,223 homes listed for sale. San Antonio had the same share of homes with price reductions, for 2,338 out of 9,861.
In many of these cities, home prices are dropping more or less significantly—suggesting that this is the reason why homeowners now have to adjust their listed price and settle for less than they had initially asked for their properties.
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In Fort Worth, the average Fort Worth home value was $302,350 as of February 29, down by 51.6 percent compared to a year before, according to Zillow data. In Dallas, the average home value was $307,990, down by 53.3 percent year on year.
The average home value in Austin during the same time was $533,719, down by 41.4 percent compared to a year earlier, while in Houston it was $264,626, down by 41.1 percent. And in San Antonio, the average home value was $253,762 at the end of February, down by 42.3 percent year on year.
A recent study by AgentStory.com showed that the cities of Austin, Dallas and Houston all had high rates of homes that went unsold between September 2023 and February 2024.
The drop in prices across Texas is mostly due to the fact that the state has been building more new homes than most of the country.
"By our estimate, there were approximately 217,000 total housing units started in Texas over 2023," Matthew Walsh, Moody's Analytics housing economist, previously told Newsweek. That's a lot compared to other states like New York and California, which in the same time have increased their housing units by respectively 26,000 and 106,000.
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Nick Gerli, founder and CEO of the real estate Reventure app, previously told Newsweek that Texas is turning into a "buyer's market," adding that he wouldn't be surprised "if things continue to get better for Texas buyers in 2024."
Uncommon Knowledge
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Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
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Giulia Carbonaro is a Newsweek Reporter based in London, U.K. Her focus is on U.S. and European politics, global affairs ... Read more
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