Growth spurt

2 Dallas neighbors zoom onto list of America’s biggest boomtowns

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Denton's got it going on.

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The Dallas area is booming, and a new study from personal finance website SmartAsset ranks two fast-growing nearby cities — Denton and McKinney — among the nation’s top 50 boomtowns.

To come up with its list of boomtowns, SmartAsset evaluated data for 500 of the largest U.S. cities. It looked at growth factors for each city such as five-year population change, average yearly growth in economic output (GDP), five-year change in number of businesses, five-year growth in housing, and August 2021 unemployment rate.

Denton and McKinney zoom onto the list, ranking, respectively, No. 36 and No. 39 in the U.S.

Both areas have seen astounding growth in five years, according to SmartAsset data, with Denton's population skyrocketing 12.41 percent, the housing rate jumping 5.13 percent, and a 23.15 percent change in businesses.

McKinney has seen its population rise an astounding 27.24 percent, the housing rate jumping 30.85 percent, and a 24.01 percent change in businesses the last five years.

On SmartAsset's 100-point boomtown scale, Denton earns a score of 83.87 and McKinney, 83.59.

The No. 1 city overall is Murfreesboro, Tennessee, a suburb of Nashville.

Elsewhere in Texas, the Houston suburb of Conroe is Texas' top boomtown, and No. 3 nationally, tied with Meridian, Idaho. And three Central Texas cities, New Braunfels (No. 14), Austin (No. 17), and Round Rock (No. 25) cracked the top 50.

Here's how the Texas boomtowns stack up:

New Braunfels (San Antonio metro area), tied for No. 14 with Concord, North Carolina. Boomtown score: 89.83. New Braunfels appeared at No. 6 in SmartAsset’s 2019 boomtown study.
Austin, No. 17. Boomtown score: 89.52. Austin appeared at No. 12 in SmartAsset’s 2019 boomtown study.
Round Rock (Austin metro area), tied for No. 25 with Charleston, South Carolina. Boomtown score: 86.98. Round Rock appeared at No. 10 in SmartAsset’s 2019 study.
Denton (Dallas-Fort Worth metro area), No. 36. Boomtown score: 83.87. Denton appeared at No. 2 in SmartAsset’s 2019 boomtown study.
McKinney (Dallas-Fort Worth metro area), No. 39. Boomtown score: 83.59. McKinney appeared at No. 14 in SmartAsset’s 2019 boomtown study.

Four Texas cities dropped out of the boomtown ranking from 2019 to 2021: Frisco, which ranked 13th two years ago; College Station, ranked 16th; Flower Mound, ranked 24th; and Allen, ranked 37th.

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