real estate

People Moving to Texas Not the Main Source of Surging Home Prices: Researchers

NBCUniversal, Inc.

Newcomers moving to Texas may not be impacting home prices as much as you might think, according to information released by the Texas Real Estate Research Center at Texas A&M looking at the profile of home buyers.

“There is essentially no correlation between Texas' statewide home-price appreciation and migration patterns over the past 15 years," said Wes Miller, senior research associate for TRERC at Texas A&M University. “The median home price rose steadily in the 2010s, with peak growth reaching 9% in 2013. At the same time, domestic migration was stable at around 100,000 net new residents throughout the decade," said

Miller says they found the number of people moving to and from Texas through 2020 remained stable, showing a net gain of roughly 100,000 new people a year. But over the same period, there were several years where home prices spiked at a rate much higher than the steady population growth. He says that shows there isn't a growing number of people moving to Texas causing the surge. They also found that out-of-state buyers are spending around $60,000 more per home, but they're buying larger homes and the price per square foot is around the same.

Miller says people may be assigning a disproportionate amount of blame to new people moving into Texas.

"If we're trying to argue that people are wealthier now, the Californians and New Yorkers are wealthier coming into Texas, they were wealthier before also and that that's not transmitting into even higher prices, that relationship has been relatively stable," said Miller.

Miller says the issues impacting prices are more complicated and difficult to pinpoint but overall, prices are more heavily influenced by supply. We've dealt with low inventory, low mortgage rates the strong labor market that's increased demand for homes.

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