Houston Housing market breaks records-Houston Chronicle

Houston-area home sales hit a record last month as more properties sold during May than any month in history.

Buyers closed on 7,794 single-family homes, a 28 percent increase compared to last May, according to the latest monthly report from the Houston Association of Realtors. The last time the market approached that level of sales in a single month was in June 2006 when there were 7,688 closings.

The median price of a single-family home also broke a record, jumping 11.9 percent to $188,000.

The rapid pace of sales and price appreciation has experts wondering if the market is getting overheated.

“We need to carefully watch pricing,” Danny Frank, the association’s chairman, said in the report. “A disproportionate appreciation in home prices could suggest a bubble, and Houston is very fortunate to have avoided one so far.”

Housing inventory continued its decline, falling to 3.3 months at the end of May. That means it would take that long to sell all the houses on the market based on the previous year’s worth of activity. Experts say around six months is a balanced market where neither buyer nor seller has the upper hand.

The local real estate market is being fueled by a strong job market, including a growing number of corporate relocations. Low interest rates have also made buying more attractive, although rates are starting to rise.

“You’d be hard-pressed to find a market anywhere in the U.S. as vibrant as ours,” Frank said. “We continue to see multiple offers on homes, in many cases before the ink has even dried on the listings. There are also many cash offers.”