May 2018 Reports and June Preliminary Data

New titles for May came in at the highest total for a month in 2018 at 1,393 homes. May’s total beat both March and April’s, even after their upward revisions and should beat last year’s peak of 1,419 homes sold in March of 2017.

Growth over April came in both the single (+11.3%) and the multi-section (+16.6%) markets putting the overall month-over-month increase at 13.7%.

Compared to May of 2017, new home titles were up 41%.

Harris County led the state with 55 new home installations, a 25% month-over-month increase which pushed the county enough to join Tarrant as the only other of the state’s five most populous counties to have more homes installed in 2018 than 2017.

The Harvey recovery and the Permian Basin counties are driving a lot of growth, but across the state most counties are seeing increased sales over 2017. Only 82 of Texas’s 254 counties are seeing less sales than they did for this same time period in 2017. For comparison sake, 103 counties ended 2017 with less new homes installed than they did in 2016.

The state as a whole is up 20.2% over 2017 at present and that trend is continuing in the preliminary data for June which is up 26% over June of 2017. The 966 new homes titled thus far for June does however mark an 11.9% decline compared to May, so there is evidence of a slight cooling from what has been a tremendous three month run, but those were three of the best months we’ve recorded in more than a decade.

The next title report will be released right around our Annual Convention in Dallas, TX, next month, and I would invite all of you to come and discuss your local market conditions with me and the rest of your colleagues in the industry.

See you in Dallas!