City vs. Burbs

Dallas-Fort Worth bucks trends when it comes to home values

Are people flocking to live near downtown, or away from it?

Photo courtesy of Allie Beth Allman/Shoot2Sell

Across the country, there’s a shift happening in home values. For the first time in a long time, urban homes are beginning to outpace their suburban counterparts — though the trend hasn’t quite made its way to Dallas-Fort Worth. At least not yet.

Zillow looked at median home values in both urban and suburban areas in major cities around the nation, measuring changes from 2014-2015 and from 2010-2015.

In DFW, the median urban home value is $192,404, while outside the downtown core, the price jumps to $210,338. Over the last five years in North Texas, there’s been a 38.8 percent change for urban, and the ever-so-slightly higher 38.9 percent for suburban.

Within the last year, however, prices went up 13.4 percent in DFW city centers and 13.9 percent on the farther reaches. This is not in line with national trends, which saw urban homes leaping 2 percent over their suburban counterparts — a recent switch.

Just two years ago in the U.S., suburban abodes were still a solid 1.2 percent higher than urban.

“This trend, in part, reflects homebuyers’ changing preferences, as they seek amenity-rich, dense, and walkable areas that are often closer to their workplace,” says Zillow chief economist Dr. Svenja Gudell in a release. “In the future, this lifestyle trend will change some suburbs as we know them, and they’ll start to feel more urban as buyers move further from city centers in search of affordable housing in communities that still feel urban.”

Cities like Boston, San Francisco, and Washington, D.C. are seeing soaring urban numbers, especially per square foot. Seems people there are totally fine with paying way more for a smaller space as long as they’re in the city, while DFW residents are still clinging to the suburban American Dream.

trends zillow

GP News

Grand Prairie expands to the south with new master-planned community

Rendering courtesy of Provident

Goodland Grand Prairie

The City of Grand Prairie is growing fast and expanding to make way for a new master-planned development south of US Highway 287 and along Tollway 360, in Ellis and Johnson counties.

The community development, called Goodland, is the result of Grand Prairie’s recent 1,500-acre annexation extending its southern border toward Mansfield. Overall, with the added land, Goodland will be a 5,000-acre site featuring 15,000 residences including townhomes, custom homes, and gated communities for 50,000 residents.

According to a release, it will be a “city within a city” and a 45-minute drive from Dallas-Fort Worth. Beyond housing, there will be shops, restaurants, schools, public and private event venues, regional sports fields and complexes, dance halls, churches, trail systems, city parks, ponds, and preserved green spaces.

“This is a significant step in our city’s development,” says Grand Prairie Mayor Ron Jensen in a statement. “Unlike many of our neighboring cities, we have the unique advantage of new development opportunities to our south that will drive the growth and prosperity of our city. We recognized the opportunity and took decisive action.”

Leading the development is Provident, a Dallas-based real estate firm that has created other master-planned communities across Dallas-Fort Worth, such as Preston Hollow Village and Hillstead in Collin County. Provident has plans to work nature into the space design with more than 1,600 acres of creek corridors and floodplain land.

Plans are ongoing for a centralized mixed-use walkable Town Center, complete with civic buildings and other commercial development. Further south on the property near Highway 67, light industrial uses and other private employment campuses are already underway, projects that will contribute vital tax dollars for city growth and future expansions.

“This level of placemaking is quite rare, and certainly not easy to execute, especially in a brand-new community," says Provident Managing Director Rylan Yowell in a statement. "We are committed to a long-term vision with a desire to be good stewards of the land."

A new four-lane road called Goodland Parkway will link Goodland to Grand Prairie at Tollway 360 and US Highway 287. It's set to open by December 2025.

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