The North Texas residential community Silverado in Aubrey was the top seller of homes in Texas for the first half of the year and third-highest in the nation, according to a new report.
Silverado, being developed by Arlington-based D.R. Horton, earned the third-place rank with 599 sales through the first half of 2022, according to the mid-2022 “50 Top-Selling Master-Planned Communities” report compiled by RCLCO Real Estate Consulting.
The 599 home sales was a 200% increase over the 200 homes sold in Silverado in the first half of 2021. It came during a period when many builders are seeing year-over-year sales declines.
Four communities in North Texas made the top 50.
Wildcat Ranch in Crandall ranked 27th nationally, with 276 home sales in the first half of the year. That’s down 3% from the 285 sold in the community midway through last year. Sessions Development and PMB Capital are building Wildcat Ranch.
Magnolia Ranch in Royse City ranked 32nd nationwide, with 255 home sales. The development by D.R. Horton fell by 15% from 301 home sales in the first half of last year.
Union Park, a Hillwood Communities development in Little Elm, ranked 42nd, with 227 home sales in the first half of this year. That’s down 19% from the 279 sold in the initial six months of 221.
Texas and Florida dominate in home sales at the halfway point of 2022, the RCLCO report says. Florida grabbed about 36% of sales among ranked communities while Texas logged 34%.
Nationwide, sales in the ranked communities fell 18% at mid-2022 compared to the first six months of 2021.
The Houston-The Woodlands-Sugar Land metro area had 13 master-planned communities in the top 50, which is more than any other metro area. Sunterra, in the Houston suburb of Katy, ranked eighth, with 450 homes sold in the first half of 2022. The community is being built by Land Tejas/Starwood Land.
The Houston metro area also topped the rankings for total sales, with 3,430, which totals almost 20% of all master-planned community homes bought.
The Villages, a community in Central Florida, was the top-seller in the country with an estimated 1,500 sales. Lakewood Ranch, in Sarasota, Fla., claimed second place, with 1,026 sales.
Nationwide, supply chain issues and inadequate new home inventory have continued to cause problems for builders, and price increases and interest rate hikes have begun to impact traffic from potential buyers in recent months, according to the RCLCO report.
Home builders in North Texas saw increasing cancelations in the first half of the year.
The percentage of home sales that fell out of contract last month in the Dallas area was 19.9% — a full 5% higher than the national average, according to a Redfin study. In the Fort Worth area, 18.9% of contracts fell through.
Nationally, the average price among all new single-family homes is up 15% since mid-year 2021, and over 40% since April 2020 and the depths of pandemic pricing.
New home prices in DFW last month broke $500,000 for the first time, according to a HomesUSA report. The three-month moving average of new home sale prices in June was a record $501,327 compared to $486,172 in May. The average new home price in DFW is up over $85,000 since June 2021, an increase of over 20% year-over-year.
Despite slowing of new sales, many developers remain optimistic since higher prices have meant that they’ve been able to meet budget despite fewer sales, the RCLCO report says.
The fundamentals underlying new home demand for the longer term remain strong, according to the report.
“Specifically, as millennial households continue to enter their prime family formation years in large numbers, a life stage that traditionally precedes single-family home ownership, long-term demand for single-family housing is likely to remain strong,” the report says. “Furthermore, these strong demand projections brought on by demographic tailwinds are coupled with a housing environment that continues to be undersupplied.”
While a recession may result from the Federal Reserve raising interest rates to combat inflation, the housing market is not oversupplied the way it was in 2008, when home sales fell 66%.
“If a there is a recession, as some economists are predicting, it’s important to remember that on average, in past recessions new home sales declined by less than 10%,” the report says.
