The ranks of million-dollar homeowners in Houston have swelled in recent years, with the number of sky-high home sales more than doubling since 2010. But the market’s swift surge is now threatened by strains in the energy industry that fueled much of the city’s high-end real estate boom.

Wealthy Houstonians purchased 1,411 homes that each sold for at least $1 million last year, up from 688 five years earlier, according to the Houston Association of Realtors.

And Houston had the highest number of luxury home sales among Texas’ four major cities last year, a report released Monday by the Texas Association of Realtors showed. That represents almost 2 percent of this area’s total housing transactions.

Million-dollar-plus home sales were up 13 percent in 2014 over the previous year, according to the second-annual Texas Luxury Home Sales Report, which looks at high-end home sales in the state’s largest cities based on sales data from the first 10 months of the year.

With astonishing speed, however, the price of oil has fallen to levels not seen in five years, and the most dour economic predictions now show Houston at risk of going into a recession.

 

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http://www.houstonchronicle.com/business/real-estate/article/Plunging-oil-could-chip-away-at-million-dollar-5995534.php