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Sales prices for homes in the Dallas-Fort Worth area reached a new high in March.

According to a recent article from DallasNews.com, a division of The Dallas Morning News, the median price of homes sold by real estate agents in the area was $260,000. This is 8 percent higher than a year ago, pushing median home prices nearly 90 percent higher than they were in March 2009, according to data from the Real Estate Center at Texas A&M University and the North Texas Real Estate Information Systems.

In the first quarter of 2018 alone, prices are up 6 percent from the first quarter of 2017. However, the rate of increase in the first quarter of this year isn’t as high as it was in 2017. CoreLogic Chief Economist Frank Nothaft told DallasNews.com that he was not surprised by the fact that home price gains have cooled a bit.

“Yes, that is what I expected and what we have seen in our data as well,” Nothaft said. “CoreLogic’s Market Conditions Indicator has identified the Dallas metro as ‘overvalued’ and would lead us to expect the appreciation rate to slow.

I would anticipate some additional moderation in growth during the coming year.”

Daren Blomquist, of Attom Data Solutions, says the slowdown in North Texas home price growth is good news.

“We have seen this pattern of decelerating home price play out a bit earlier in markets such as Phoenix and Atlanta,” Blomquist said in a statement to DallasNews.com. “And I would consider it a very healthy pattern as it brings home price appreciation more in line with wage growth and therefore sets the stage for more sustainable growth in the Dallas-Fort Worth housing market.”

Here are a few more key findings from the latest report:

  • Preowned home sales increased 4 percent in March from a year ago.
  • For the first quarter, real estate agents sold more than 22,000 North Texas houses, 4 percent more than the first quarter a year ago.
  • By the end of March, there were 19,231 houses listed for sale with agents in the more than two dozen North Texas counties included in the survey, reflecting an 8 percent increase from the same time a year ago.
  • Inventory of available homes for sale remains tight, with only a 2.2-month supply.