What Dallas-Fort Worth homeowners do for a living
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Business and tech professionals are the most likely to own a home in Dallas-Fort Worth but their rate of ownership has dropped in a decade, according to a real estate analysis shared exclusively with Axios.
The big picture: The occupations with the highest homeownership rates in North Texas mirror national trends, per the National Association of Realtors analysis of Census Bureau data.
Zoom in: Homeownership rates have grown for service workers, health care workers and real estate employees in D-FW, but rates have declined for other jobs.
- A lower percentage of public safety and transportation employees owned homes in 2024 compared to 10 years earlier, dropping from 53% to 50%.
- In 2024, 64% of local tech professionals owned a home, down 5 percentage points in a decade.
Zoom out: The national homeownership rate is about 65%.
- Though the percentage of management and business professionals who own homes has dropped locally, the occupation continues to lead with about 72% owning homes in 2024, flat from 2014.
The intrigue: Service workers still have the lowest homeownership rate nationally but saw the highest jump since 2014, rising from 43% to 46%.
- D-FW has a higher homeownership rate for service workers than other major metros. For example, 45% of service workers in San Francisco own a home, compared to 51% in the Dallas area.
Reality check: Homeownership varies widely based on local housing affordability and job mix, according to NAR.
- "It's not just about jobs. It's really about where those jobs are located, and how affordable housing is in those markets," NAR principal economist Nadia Evangelou tells Axios.
The bottom line: "There are not enough homes at the price point people can afford to buy, and that's pushing even strong earners out of homeownership," Evangelou says.