Dallas households are $30,000 short of affording a median house
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You need to earn more than $127,000 a year to afford a median-priced house in the Dallas area without spending more than 30% of your income, according to Redfin.
Why it matters: The income needed to buy a house is about $30,000 more than the median income in the region.
The big picture: Housing prices soared during the pandemic when remote workers moved to Sun Belt cities, like Dallas-Fort Worth.
- Prices are starting to drop now that inventory has increased and demand is decreasing.
Flashback: In 2012, a Dallas household needed to make just $38,525 to afford a median-priced home.
- Households didn't need to make more than $100,000 a year to afford a median-priced house until 2021.
Zoom in: Dallas saw one of the biggest improvements in affordability in 2024 among the 50 most populous U.S. metros, the Redfin report found.
- Austin saw the biggest improvement.
By the numbers: Dallas-area households making the $97,908 median income would have needed to spend 38.9% of their pay on monthly housing costs if they bought a $421,613 median-priced home.
- That was down 2 percentage points from 2023.
- Fort Worth households making the $89,116 median income in 2024 would have needed to spend 36.7% of their income on monthly housing costs if they bought a $357,817 median-priced home.
- That was down from 38.3% in 2013.
Zoom out: Nationwide, households must earn roughly $117,000 a year to afford a median-priced U.S. home, according to Redfin.
The bottom line: "Affordability improved ever so slightly this year because wage growth outpaced the growth in monthly housing payments," Redfin senior economist Elijah de la Campa said in the report.
- But for many, "buying a home remains more out of reach than ever and that's unlikely to change anytime soon."