Steep Drop in Home-Building Permits in Dallas Suburbs
Year-to-date building permits for single-family houses slide as much as 48% from last year’s pace.
As the spring building season unfolds, the number of building permits issued this year for construction of single-family houses in suburban Dallas has dropped significantly from last year’s tally in one of the nation’s hottest residential markets.
However, the drop-off in building permits from January through the end of April 2022 might be a collateral effect of construction delays due to supply chain issues rather than a leading indicator of an abrupt cooling off of the red-hot housing market in Dallas, where the average single-family home price hit another record high in April.
According to a report this week in the Dallas Business Journal, based on data through the end of April compiled by Addison, TX-based Tomlin Investments, home-building permits have been down 45% in Frisco, TX, 27% in Celina and 21% in Prosper, compared to the number of permits issued during the same period last year.
In Frisco, 634 single-family permits were issued during the first four months of this year, compared to 1,134, reported Tomlin, which tracks new home construction around the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex. The four-month tally of permits in Celina was 732, compared to 1,003 last year; Prosper’s four-month total was 378, compared to 476.
Permits in Princeton, TX have dropped from 606 during the first four months of 2021 to 313 during the same period this year, a 48% plunge. In the small town of Sanger, the permit total dropped by 93 during the January-April timeframe to 14, according to the report.
There have been a few exceptions to the slowdown in building permits in the suburbs of Dallas, Tomlin said, including the Texas towns of Sherman, Van Alstyne and Anna, which recorded increases in single-family building permits during the first four months of 2022.
Late last year, Dallas-based Texas Instruments selected Sherman as the site of its new semiconductor complex, where TI says it will invest up to $30B to build several new chip fabs.
Despite the overall slowdown in home-building permits, new home sales and home prices continue to increase in the DFW area, according to the latest monthly report from Dallas-based HomesUSA.
HomesUSA’s three-month moving average of DFW new home sales shows April sales listed in the Multiple Listing Services increased to 1,321 from 1,253 in March.
In April, the three-month moving average of new home sales prices hit a record $470,756, compared to $461,418 in March. The moving average reported for April represents a 14% YOY increase since April 2021.