Work to Live

This is how many hours you must work to pay the rent in Dallas

Dallasites are apparently stuck in the office a lot.

Photo by Joe Daniel Price/Getty Images

Ever wonder how much of your time goes toward writing that rent check every month? SmartAsset crunched the numbers and calculated how many hours of work are needed to afford rent in America's 25 largest cities, including six in Texas.

The personal finance website looked at each city's data for average annual take-home pay, average hours worked per year, and median rent (all gathered from the U.S. Census). For the take-home pay, SmartAsset assumed each worker was contributing to an IRA or 401(k), took the standard deduction, and submitted as a single filer.

To get the final number, the site took average pay by hours worked, then divided the monthly median rent by the average hourly wage.

Dallas barely misses the top 10, coming in at No. 11 with 64.5 hours needed to cover the $935 rent. Its estimated $14.50 hourly wage gets slightly eclipsed by neighboring Fort Worth's $15.36, which translates to 63.4 hours necessary to pay the $974 rent and pushes the city into No. 15 overall.

Houston gets the dubious distinction of landing at No. 9, despite paying the least in income tax on average among the other nine. But those low average earnings (just over $31,060 per year, or $14.36 per hour after taxes) and low rent ($952) cancel out the bonus of not having to pay state income tax. Workers in H-Town still need to put in 66.3 hours to cover their average monthly rent.

San Antonio, surprisingly, requires more hours than Austin — but not many. Though Alamo City's rent is appreciably lower ($924 compared to $1,194), the estimated hourly wage is much less: $14.36 in San Antonio, $18.64 in Austin. That all lands San Antonio at No. 12 with 64.3 hours, and Austin at No. 13 with 64 hours.

El Paso nets the lowest all-around numbers of any Texas city in the study, meaning its affordable $778 rent and 63 hours of work are balanced out by the $12.36 hourly earnings.

Much like Zillow's recent study about single homebuyers, residents of San Jose and Los Angeles have it the hardest, while Indianapolis once again scores as the easiest city in which to have a roof over your head.

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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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