Why Dallas-Fort Worth embraces the sprawl
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Dallas-Fort Worth keeps growing and spreading. Photo: Jay L. Clendenin/Getty Images
North Texas housing could be even more expensive if not for new development in the sprawling suburbs, according to a new George W. Bush Institute report.
Why it matters: People want to move to Texas and specifically to the Dallas-Fort Worth region.
- America is short at least 3.7 million housing units, driving up the cost of renting or buying. Even Texas, which leads the nation in residential construction, is still short at least 300,000 units.
The latest: Dallas-Fort Worth and other Sun Belt metro areas offer more affordable houses and apartments than equally in-demand coastal cities, like San Francisco, because they have less-restrictive housing policies, the Bush Institute report found.
- By staying ahead of the population growth, Sun Belt cities have kept housing prices about 10% cheaper than they otherwise would be, the report estimates.
Stunning stat: If every large U.S. metro had similar housing policies to D-FW and other Sun Belt regions, about 5.6 million additional homes would have been built nationwide from 2010 to 2023.
- The average home price could be $115,000 lower and monthly rents could be $450 cheaper if the biggest metros added housing at a rate consistent with Sun Belt cities, the study found.
What they did: Economists with the nonpartisan independent policy institute at SMU analyzed population, income and real estate data from the 250 largest metro areas since 2010 to determine how cities are meeting the demand for housing.
- The report focuses on the country's fastest-growing cities.
What they found: The U.S. population has shifted from the coasts and the northeast to Sun Belt cities in the South and mountain metros in the West.
- The 25 fastest-growing Sun Belt cities — including D-FW and other major Texas metros — accounted for 42% of single-family houses and 36% of apartments built in the last seven years.
Reality check: Though Sun Belt metros have more affordable real estate than restrictive coastal cities, housing in the Sun Belt still remains too expensive for people at the lowest income levels.
Zoom out: Charlotte, N.C., ranked as the No. 1 most pro-growth metro in the country due to how quickly the city has added housing to match its population growth.
- Austin ranked No. 2, Houston was fifth, and the D-FW area ranked 14th among the most pro-growth metros.
Zoom in: Dallas-Fort Worth accounted for 5.1% of new housing production in the largest 250 U.S. metros from 2010-2023, per the report.
- Houston accounted for 5.2%.
- Austin, meanwhile, accounted for 2.6% of all new housing production.
Between the lines: The housing growth hasn't come from increasing density in the core cities, like Dallas and Fort Worth. Most new housing has been added in suburbs and exurbs.
- Frisco, Lewisville and McKinney, for example, added midrange apartments at a per-capita rate 30 times that of Chicago, Los Angeles and New York City.
What they're saying: Suburbs like Frisco and McKinney are successful because they allow mixed-use development, single-family housing and multifamily housing, which makes them more dense than suburbs outside of cities like Boston.
- "If a whole lot more places were like McKinney, the world would be a much better place," Bush Institute-SMU Economic Growth Initiative director Cullum Clark tells Axios.