After months of hiding out from the coronavirus, North Texas homebuyers are heading out to hunt for properties.
Traffic still has a ways to go to catch up with pre-pandemic levels, but real estate agents say they are seeing more house shoppers scouting the market.
"They are still cautious about what is going to happen with the virus and the economy — there are a lot of unknowns," said top Dallas real estate agent Allie Beth Allman.
"But we are seeing a lot more traffic. There is a lot of pent-up demand. People have been penned up for three months."
During that time, home purchases in the Dallas-Fort Worth area have slowed as buyers sheltered in place, and real estate agents adjusted their businesses to offer virtual home tours and social distancing.
Open houses have been a thing of the past.
"I'm working from home — I'm not back at the office yet," Allman said. "You have to be so careful for the buyers' protection and our protection. The protest has taken peoples' minds off the virus, but the virus has not gone away."
North Texas home sales fell 17% in April as the pandemic put the brakes on home purchases.
So far, Dallas-Fort Worth prices have remained slightly ahead of where they were a year ago. But there has been a significant drop in the number of homes on the market as sellers pulled back from the traditionally busy spring season.
Chris Kelly, CEO of Ebby Halliday Realtors in Dallas, said more homes are being listed for sale as sellers become more comfortable operating in a COVID-19 environment.
"If you look at May vs. April, listings are up 22% all around North Texas," Kelly said. "That is still about 16% below where we were in May 2019. We bottomed out about the end of March and have been coming up since then."
Kelly said buyer traffic is 85% higher than it was at the first of April. "The buyers are out in force," he said.
The increase in home shopping won't show up as sales for several months.
"May will 100% be our low closing month," Kelly said. "Right now closings in May are off about 33% vs. last year. Because the listings and pending sales are now up, we'll start seeing results of that in June and in July and I suspect into the fall as well."
Ebby Halliday agents are even doing some open houses again.
"But we are only allowing one group in at a time," Kelly said. "Our agents have also done a great job of doing video tours for people who don't want to come in."
Some housing professionals are already predicting that the worst of the pandemic's impact on the home market is over.
"People in real estate are born optimists," said James Gaines, chief economist at the Real Estate Center at Texas A&M University.
"I don't doubt that they see things in such a positive fashion and hope they are right. So far, we don't have enough hard data to confirm what they are saying. My guess is that we'll see an uptick in activity."
"People are now getting out and there is most definitely a pent-up demand that will surface."
But with more than 280,000 job losses in the D-FW area in the last year due to COVID-19, it's not reasonable to expect no impact on the home market.
CoreLogic is predicting that median Dallas-area home prices will fall about 2% during the next year.
Nationwide, unemployment rolls have grown by more than 40 million people during the pandemic.
"For people around the world, the COVID-19 pandemic has been a traumatic experience, accompanied by an unprecedented economic shutdown," said George Ratiu, senior economist with Realtor.com. "After a prolonged shutdown, it is natural that we are looking for signs of optimism and recovery."
"Most of the economic and housing data are emerging with a lag, which means that we are still waiting for information about April and May activity," he said. "With global economies in a recession, the road ahead is likely to be longer than we currently anticipate."
