How much have Dallas home prices really risen?

Dallas newspaper headlines over the past year have regularly broadcast that home prices are up. A week ago they announced that area prices are up 13%. So does that mean your home's value is up 13%?

Don't get excited too quickly. Let's take a closer look at these statistics and what they really mean. The average home sales price across North Texas was up 13% in February 2014 from February 2013. Broken down, this means:

• these statistics are across the entire North Texas region - not just Dallas or your neighborhood.
• this represents the average home sales price and this is where it gets tricky.

If we sold 100 homes that averaged $200,000 each one year and the next year we sold 100 homes that averaged $500,000 each, then statistically the 'average sales price' would have risen more than 100 percent. It doesn't mean that the price of home A or home B went up 100 percent. It just means we sold more expensive homes this year than we did the previous year.

Remember the first time home buyers incentive offered just 3 or 4 years ago? It gave a boost to our sluggish real estate market. But most of those sales were for 'lower priced' homes. Average sales prices were low because cheaper homes (that first time buyers could afford) were selling a lot more than the more expensive properties.

In today's market, we're seeing sales of more expensive properties and that is driving up the 'average sales price'. Just a couple of years ago we had some neighborhoods with more than a 3 year inventory of homes priced over $1 million. Today those same neighborhoods have less than a 6 month inventory of homes priced over $1 million.

That said - home prices have risen and are still rising.

The only true way to know how much your home has increased in value is to get an appraisal or a market analysis of your property. Your individual property is evaluated based on recent sales in your neighborhood of similar properties of comparable size, age and condition. I gladly give a comparative market analysis to potential clients in the Dallas area to help determine how much their property value has risen.

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