GREAT NEWS FOR DALLAS, FORT WORTH, SAN ANTONIO AND HOUSTON

Report: Dallas-Fort Worth has lowest risk for home-price declines

05:00 PM CDT on Tuesday, July 1, 2008

By STEVE BROWN / The Dallas Morning News
stevebrown@dallasnews.com

The latest home price risk forecast shows that Dallas-Fort Worth is overall the safest place in the country for stable home values.

The latest report by mortgage insurance company PMI Group ranked the D-FW area dead last among the 50 cities it rates for possible home price declines.

That means PMI is betting there is less than a 1 percent chance that average home prices here will be lower two years from now.

PMI's summer 2008 risk ranking for D-FW is similar to what the insurance company has reported in previous studies.

Also as in other PMI reports, the U.S. cities that have seen the biggest run-up in home prices in recent years have the highest likelihood of losses.

The markets with the greatest risk for home price drops are Riverside-San Bernardino-Ontario, Calif. (95.5%), Fort Lauderdale-Pompano Beach-Deerfield Beach, Fla. (92.2%) and West Palm Beach-Boca Raton-Boynton Beach, Fla. (91.9%).

Along with Dallas-Fort Worth, the most stable price markets in the comparison included Pittsburgh, Houston and San Antonio - all with less than a 1 percent chance of decline.

PMI chief economist David Berson said in the report that in some markets during the last year there has been a significant increase in the number of existing single-family homes for sale relative to the number of buyers.

"Given the magnitude of the inventory overhang, we expect national home-price declines to continue into at least 2009," Mr. Berson said.

However in North Texas, the number of pre-owned homes listed for sale in real estate agents' multiple listing services has declined during the past year.

While PMI Group's report about D-FW home prices should be encouraging to potential buyers, Mr. Berson said that doesn't mean there won't be short-term declines in values.

"It is also an average for a metropolitan area - so individual neighborhoods and houses could behave differently," he said, perhaps considerably so.

PMI SUMMER 2008 PMI U.S. MARKET RISK INDEX