How the real estate industry is changing in Texas
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Since the pandemic, Texas has had one of the "most dynamic" real estate boom and bust cycles in the state's recent history, per a Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas report released Wednesday.
Why it matters: The real estate industry typically follows trends in the housing market, expanding as more homes hit the market and contracting as sales hit a snag.
State of play: Home prices are rising faster in the Northeast and Midwest, where there's less newly built housing.
- In the South and West, prices are softening as pandemic-era migration slows and insurance costs climb.
- In Texas last October, homes were on the market for a median of 74 days. The national median was 51 days.
Zoom in: Realtor.com projects the sales of existing North Texas homes will decline by 5.4% this year compared with last year. The median sale price is projected to increase 1.8%.
- Franceanna Campagna, president of the MetroTex Association of Realtors, tells Axios that Dallas-Fort Worth doesn't have an inventory issue; it has an affordability problem.
- She says she has had to nudge her sellers to price their homes competitively to sustain buyer interest.
- "The days of putting the sign in the yard and having five offers within an hour are over," Campagna says.
Zoom out: Texas' changing real estate market may also be dampening the allure of a real estate license.
- Across Texas, the number of new licensed salespeople entering the market per quarter jumped 60% between early 2020 and early 2022.
- But as interest rates increased, the rate of new salespeople entering the market had declined by 50% by the end of 2024, the Dallas Fed found.
- Meanwhile, the rate of salespeople upgrading to broker status — which requires a combination of work experience, education and passing an exam — peaked in 2022 to around 800 brokers per quarter and fell to fewer than 400 per quarter in early 2025.
The bottom line: "Thousands of Texans who made career bets on real estate during the pandemic era face uncertain prospects," the Fed says.
- "Some will transition to other industries, but not without some economic pain."