Each Friday, Robbie Briggs, CEO of Briggs Freeman Sotheby’s International Realty, writes about luxury, trends, business and more in the advertising pages of the Mansion section of The Wall Street Journal. Below is his letter of January 20, 2023.
FROM MY PERSPECTIVE
With apologies to Mark Twain, the reports of the death of the luxury real estate market have been exaggerated.
Yes, our North Texas market demonstrated a decline in 2022 compared to the pandemic years of 2020 and 2021, but those were unusually hot markets that we knew would cool down. The drop last year has been mainly driven by a confluence of factors — low inventory, inflation, higher mortgage rates — but our market continues to perform above pre-pandemic norms. What’s more, several North Texas areas have experienced growth in the upper price tiers: Closed sales from $1 to $2.5 million in Collin County increased 43 percent between 2021 and 2022. Tarrant County saw a 12-percent increase in sales in that same price range over the same period. And, Dallas County has seen an increase of 46 percent in closed sales in the $1 to $2.5 million price tier, comparing 2022 against 2019.
In fact, Dallas-Fort Worth is expected to outperform most other metro areas in 2023, according to the National Association of REALTORS®, which just ranked our metro area No. 3 of the top 10 markets to watch. One reason why? From October 2019 through October 2022, our region added 341,000 jobs, well ahead of comparable metros such as Atlanta (147,000 new jobs) and Houston (136,000). On other positive fronts, mortgage rates have ticked down slightly and unemployment is staying low.
Our forecast? We see our market normalizing further — but what could that mean for you? We’ve crunched 2022’s fourth-quarter and whole-year numbers and interpreted them at briggsfreeman.com/market-moves. Our latest Market Moves report has valuable stats, facts and figures, plus a look at what the market is doing in several counties.
Nothing, though, can help you more than talking with one of our expert agents. We’ve got about 400 of them across North Texas, in offices in Dallas, Fort Worth, Southlake, Lakewood and Plano/Frisco.
Take it from me: They know their stuff, no matter which way the market moves.
Robbie Briggs
CEO
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