Texas real estate markets are moving both up and down, and some realtors say it's creating a new equilibrium in the home sales markets.
After years of too many people wanting to buy homes during a shortage of homes for sale, the inventory of homes on the market has ow been high for a while -- and home buyers are showing new interest.
"If we were to sell everything on the market right now and nothing else came on the market, it would take about six months to sell everything," says Dallas's Mariposa Group co-president Caralee Gurney, a real estate expert.
She says compare that to fifteen years ago, when it would only take six weeks to sell the entire current inventory.
"I've watched about four months of inventory a year ago, go to six months of inventory now," she says, which is already making up a buyers market.
Bargain hunters may be in the markets because there are so many homes sitting unsold that homeowners may pull many of them from the market if they can't get the price they want, and those who are hot to sell will do so at a lower price while the inventory is high.
In a few months, there may be many fewer homes on the market, making now a good time to show interest in a home, coupled with a possible lowering of mortgage interest rates by the end of this year.
And one of the big reliefs for homebuyers now is the slowed yearly increase in home prices, which were shooting way up each year for many years now.
Gurney adds, "I've seen a lot of buyers show interest in this market because they've been through a whole lot these past few years."