Here is more proof that North Texas is increasingly becoming the place to be – three Collin County cities were just ranked near the top of WalletHub’s list of the Best Places to be a First-Time Homebuyer.
Frisco, McKinney and Allen ranked 7, 8 and 16, respectively, out of 300 cities across the United States.
WalletHub, a personal finance website, compared the cities “across three key dimensions”: affordability, real-estate market and quality of life.
In terms of affordability, these local cities didn't fare so well against the competition – Allen ranked 132 out of 300, Frisco ranked 152 and McKinney ranked 165.
The median sale price of a home in Frisco, through the end of June, is $380,000, while McKinney and Allen are both at $330,000, according to numbers released on Tuesday by the Collin County Association of Realtors.
WalletHub ranked McKinney as the No. 1 market in the country, with Frisco and Allen following closely behind at 2 and 8, respectively.
Several factors were included in determining the market rank, according to Diana Polk, Communications Manager for WalletHub:
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- Rent-to-price ratio
- Housing market health index
- Share of homes sold in one year
- Median home price appreciation
- Foreclosure rate
- Share of mortgage holders with negative equity
- Buy vs. rent break-even horizon
- Share of listings with price cuts
- Share of housing units built between 2010 and 2016
- Building permit activity
- Mortgage lenders per capita
- Real estate agents per capita
- Homeownership rate for millennials
In terms of quality of life, the three Collin County cities ranked near the top – Allen came in at 37 out of 300, McKinney ranked 42 and Frisco ranked 44.
These rankings do not come as a surprise to Sonny Moyers, a realtor/broker with Ebby Halliday in Frisco.
Moyers started selling homes in Collin County 20 years ago, and noted that things have certainly changed in that time.
“In 2000 someone said to me, ‘I am very upset that in the city of Frisco we cannot find a new home for under $100,000.’ Well today finding a great new home for under $250,000 is a challenge,” Moyers said.
There is recent evidence that the red hot real estate market that Collin County, and much of North Texas, has experienced in recent years is beginning to cool.
The report from the Collin County Association of Realtors released Tuesday noted that the houses are staying on the market noticeably longer so far in 2018 than they did through this point in 2017. The combined average Days on Market Until Sale in Frisco, McKinney and Allen is 49 days, compared to 39 days last year.
Another example is that the Percent of Original Asking Price Received is down approximately 1.13 percent, combined among the three cities when compared to 2017.
However, this WalletHub report is one key indication that this market is still among the very best in the country.
“When people think things have slowed down a bit it hasn't slowed down compared to normal,” Moyers said. “It might have slowed down compared to that super-heated economy when we had so many people moving here [but not compared to normal.]”
