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# Real estate sales thumping in Texas
- URL: https://www.smdp.com/real-estate-sales-thumping-in-texas/
- Published: 2006-08-09T15:00:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-25T00:34:33.000Z
- Author: Guest Author
- Tags: Opinion, Santa Monica, #archive-import

*By JODI SUMMERS*

If you thought the real estate market has been hot in this millennium just check out what’s down the line. In 300 years, the United States has built more than 300 billion square feet of homes, offices, factories and other structures. A recent study from the Brookings Institution and Virginia Tech urban planning professor Robert Lang shocked pundits when they predicted that the U.S. will build its next 200 billion square fee in the next 25 years.

The study notes that in a perfect world, new construction will grow to accommodate 70 million more people and replace homes and offices wiped out by disaster and debilitated by obsolescence. The development budget for those new projects will grow to $25 trillion by 2030 — more than twice the size of the U.S. economy today.

Although real estate is not yielding the return on investment it did several years ago, it’s still holding its own. According to the National Association of Realtors, growth in the real estate market has slowed to about 6 percent growth nationally, with slightly a higher growth rate here in SoCal. But just because the real estate market has slowed down in our neighborhood, it doesn’t mean that great real estate investments are a thing of the past. There are still many real estate boomtowns out there.

“Boomtowns have double-digit increases,” said Dana Willett-Maier of Sandcastle Investments LLC, a Louisville, Ky., real estate consulting firm that helps clients find and invest in “boomtown” properties across the country.

“A boomtown is any area that experiences double-digit increases in the percentage of house-price appreciation from year to year and double-digit increases in the percentage of home sales each year.”

Southern California was a booming region until this year. Over the last couple of years annual home appreciation in places as varied Inglewood and Calabasas have grown by more than 40 percent.

Some of those that have made a lot of money in California have taken their cash out of state, which is why neighboring states like Arizona and Nevada have had such incredible appreciation. Places like Austin have been a favorite of savvy West Coast investors and Texas has become a hot place for Californians to invest. Earlier this year, when Mark Dotzour, chief economist for The Real Estate Center at Texas A&M University, gave a presentation to a group of Texas mortgage professionals, he asked how many of them had recently closed a mortgage loan for a California resident — about 75 percent raised their hands in affirmation. “This is quite a deluge. It’s quite widespread,” Dotzour said about the influx of California buyers to the Texas market.

“We see a big influx of California investors,” confirms Mary Manry, who works at Brants Realtors. “Californians can buy a lot more house in Texas for a lot less than they could in their own state.”

Texas is not quite a boom state, but this year’s real estate statistics are more impressive than many other parts of the country. According to statistics compiled by Texas A&M’s The Real Estate Center,from May 2005 to May 2006,home sales in Texas increased 8.3 percent. The total inventory of for-sale properties declined 5 percent, the median price of sold homes increased 6.3 percent, and the supply of for-sale homes dropped from 5.8 months to five months — all indications of a seller’s market gaining steam.

Noteworthy areas: Odessa and Midland had a 15 percent rise. Real estate markets in El Paso, San Antonio, Wichita Falls, Corpus Christi, Tyler and Brownsville also are on the upswing.

“Texas traditionally has run somewhat counter-cyclical to the national economy,” Dotzour said. “So much of its economic fortune is related to oil and gas.As the price of oil and gas and related chemicals rises,Texas tends to prosper while the rest of the nation suffers.

“The state’s economy has diversified in the past 20 years so that Texas now looks and acts a lot like the rest of the U.S. than it used to,” Dotzour added. “Most of Texas now is more in tune with the rhythms of the U.S. economy.”

Texas was hit hard by 9/11\. Various air-lines have major hubs in Texas and state-based dot coms went bust. Those businesses are now coming back, and Texas’ mainstay, the oil and gas industry, have aided in improving the real estate market.

“Texas has been cited by some industry experts as an undervalued real estate market,” Dotzour said. “You can still buy a really nice home for $100 a square foot in Texas, phases of new-home construction in the state since 2002 have helped to moderate home prices.

Both Texas A&M and the Brookings Institution site cities like San Antonio and Dallas as major Boomtown areas.

“No region better captures and caters to the Latino population boom,” states the Brookings Institution. “A new generation of Hispanic business owners and industrialists will drive the growth, and the area will become a magnet for foreign firms trying to cash in on the U.S. Latino market.”

The Gulf Coast area from the Florida Panhandle to Houston — an area shattered by Hurricane Katrina also is being touted as a great area to invest. In Houston, it has been predicted that by 2015, Houston will have one of the nation’s highest surges in workers under 25 years old.

The U.S. Census Bureau projects that Texas will be one of the fastest-growing states in the nation from 2000-2030, with a population increase of 59.8 percent in that time. By comparison, the population in Nevada is expected to grow 114.3 percent during that time, followed by Arizona at 108.8 percent and Florida at 79.5 percent. Other fast-growing states include Utah, with projected population growth of 56.1 percent from 2000-2030; Idaho at 52.2 percent; North Carolina at 51.9 percent; Georgia at 46.8 percent; Washington at 46.3 percent and Oregon at 41.3 percent.

Next week we will look at other potential boomtown areas around the U.S.

For more on Southern California commercial properties there is a great information blog at www.socalindustrialrealestate-blog.com. (Jodi Summers is director of the investment division at Boardwalk Realty. For your real estate needs, , call (310) 309-4219, or visit her Web site at www.santamonicalandmarks.com.)

*Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on August 9, 2006.* [Read the original PDF.](https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/smdp%5Fbackissues/080906.pdf?ref=smdp.com)