Toni Arney

Analysts predict North Texas will end 2009 with about 13,000 new home starts, and that number will grow by 10 percent to 25 percent in 2010.

Housing starts in the Dallas-Fort Worth area will increase to 16,000 to 18,000 in 2010, said David Brown, director of the Dallas office of MetroStudy. That would be a healthy increase, but it’s still a fraction of the approximately 52,000 new homes started during the market’s peak year of 2006.

Builders have spent the last three years selling off their inventories, and now speculative homes are scarce. Demand exists for more than 20,000 new homes next year, but builders won’t construct that many because lenders are restricting the amount of construction financing available, Brown said.

“A substantial portion of sales every year in this market have always been spec homes,” he said. “Lenders are not allowing builders to build as many spec homes, so that may constrain some of the starts.”

In the existing-home market, healthy inventory levels, the extension and expansion of tax credits and home affordability point to improving sales in 2010, said Bill Head, spokesman for the MetroTex Association of Realtors. He hopes the market in 2010 will start rebounding to the sales levels seen in 2002 to 2004, when 69,000 to 80,000 units were sold annually.

About 65,000 home sales are expected in North Texas in 2009, Head said. The market peaked in 2006, with 93,760 sales.

On the other hand, if unemployment remains high in North Texas, 2010 will prove to be another rough year for home foreclosures, said George Roddy Sr., president of Addison-based Foreclosure Listing Service (FLS) Inc. Annual home foreclosure postings reached a record high in the Dallas-Fort Worth area in 2009, topping 60,000 for the first time, according to FLS.

“We don’t see a downturn (in foreclosures) anytime soon,” Roddy said. “When somebody doesn’t have a job, it makes it tough to make the house payment.”