North Texas home sales prices hit an all-time high in March.

The median price of homes sold by real estate agents in the area was $260,000 -- up 8 percent from a year ago.

Median home prices in North Texas are now almost 90 percent higher than they were in March of 2009, according to data from the Real Estate Center at Texas A&M University and the North Texas Real Estate Information Systems.

Through the first quarter of 2018, prices are up another 6 percent from the same period in 2017.

While prices are still increasing, Dallas-Fort Worth home values are not rising at the 13 percent first quarter year-over-year rise of a year ago.

CoreLogic chief economist Frank Nothaft isn't surprised the D-FW price hikes 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 area 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."

The slowdown in the rate of North Texas home price appreciation is good news, said Daren Blomquist, with Attom Data Solutions.

"We have seen this pattern of decelerating home price appreciation play out a bit earlier in other markets such as Phoenix and Atlanta," Blomquist said. "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."

Preowned home sales rose 4 percent in March from a year ago with 9,412 single-family houses changing hands.

For the first quarter, real estate agents sold 22,037 North Texas houses - 4 percent more than in first quarter 2017.

On average it took 52 days to sell a house that was purchased in the first quarter, 7 percent more time on market than in first quarter 2017.

At 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. That's 8 percent more homes on the market than a year ago.

But there is still only a 2.2-month supply of houses available for sale.

North Texas real estate agents sold a record of more than 106,000 houses in 2017.

Forecasts for this year call for another modest increase in both preowned home sales and prices in the area.