You have got to love this place!

By Roxann Taylor, Roxann Taylor & Associates Realtors

Now that the chants of “it’s going to be great in ’08!” are just distant echoes from our New Year’s celebrations…let’s look at the facts as proof to why it is true.  It’s true because we have the #1 real estate market in the entire country.  From New York to Los Angeles and most cities in between the average price of a fair market value home has been decreasing longer than we would all care to recognize.  According to the National Association of Realtors the sales prices of existing single family homes in the U.S. declined 3.7% from a year ago¹.

Yet, despite it all Southlake has managed to turn those figures 180 degrees and create a market bubble that is completely independent of the national economy.  Even though our windows are open in our recently warm winter months we don’t hear the same noises of foreclosure and mortgage nightmares or much of any other doom or gloom that keeps others awake in bed during the wee hours of the morning.

The year end statistics from the North Texas Real Estate Information System (NTREIS) are in and we now can look at the facts on the Southlake housing market which we know came in quietly but went out with a roar!   For an average home of roughly 4,200 ft² with four bedrooms and three bathrooms, believe it or not the selling price rose an astonishing 6.4%, or $39,677 over the preceding year.  On average home buyers in Southlake spent over $617,000 for their home in 2007².

For those 599 families who just bought a home here…there is little need to worry.  Because of our excellent city planning, exemplary schools, proximity to an international airport and our family forward culture – I see little reason why these prices would not continue to rise.

For the rest of us 8,000 plus homeowners, congratulations on another great year!  It is also nice to know that the number of homes sold actually dropped 4.2% in 2007 versus 2006.  This could be misconstrued as a negative situation, but the mere fact that prices still rose should prove that quite frankly…no one wants to leave.

Economists trying to predict the marketplace certainly did not calculate Southlake into the equation of doom and gloom.  From our civil servants to our teachers, to our founding  and long time residents and to all the residents who devote endless of hours and monies into such acitivities as Digging for Dragons, Carroll Education Foundation and just too many others to mention, Southlake has been borne outside of the norm, a true community trying to make a difference today and of all things has created utopia for the investor in real estate, the family making a smart buying decision and actually realizing a profit upon sale, what a novel revelation.

All kidding aside, they say in real estate that it is “location, location, location” my gosh we all do have the location!

1. National Association of Realtors data on file Jan-Nov 2007.  www.realtor.org

2. Texas Real Estate Information System (NTREIS) data from January 9^, 2008.