Chron.com

Houston’s housing market shattered records in 2018, despite lingering effects from Hurricane Harvey and concerns that began late in the year over rising interest rates. Single-family home sales were up nearly 4 percent over the previous record in 2017, the Houston Association of Realtors said Wednesday in an annual report. Going into 2019, however, the health of the local market appears shaky as it faces a number of lingering headwinds as well as some unexpected new ones. “Federal workers are on edge about the ongoing government shutdown and how that might hurt their cash flow, which could affect housing,” Shannon Cobb Evans, the association’s 2019 chair, said in the report. In addition, the local market remains challenged by low inventory, rising mortgage rates and new tax laws that remove some of the benefits of homeownership. Buyers last year closed on 82,177 homes, up 3.8 percent from the previous year, according to the realty association, which tracks home sales handled through the Multiple Listing Service across greater Houston. Total dollar volume for year spiked 21.5 percent to a record-breaking $28 billion.