Open-House Ready

Zillow reveals the best time to put your Dallas home on the market

Better start prepping your home now.

Photo by Phillip Spears/Getty Images

It seems Texas' lack of a real winter has a ripple effect that extends far beyond agriculture. Spring has been declared the ideal time to list your home in Dallas-Fort Worth, with homes hitting the market at the end of June fetching $2,000 more.

That's according to a recent study from Zillow, which analyzed the history and outcome of millions of home listings over the last several years.

Late May is almost as profitable in DFW, but as soon as the calendar hits late June, the numbers start falling. Seems the extreme heat of Texas summers is nearly as bad as possible ice in the winter, with sellers taking a sizable cut from late November through January.

If you want to get the most eyeballs on your listing when it first debuts, make it live on a Sunday. Saturday and Friday are close behind, but posting on a Tuesday means a sharp downtick in views.

Buyer interest also fades quickly, Zillow confirms, with traffic for new listings dramatically falling after only seven days. In the first week, homes in DFW are 53 percent likely to sell at or above list price. By week 12, the number drops to only 11 percent.

The stats are slightly different elsewhere around Texas, with Austin seeing Saturdays in early May as the best time to list. Early birds get the worm in Houston and San Antonio, where early and late May are the key list times.

But the rest of the nation is even earlier, with homes listed for sale anytime in April selling one full week faster than average.

find your community

Dallas-Fort Worth ranks among top 25 most livable U.S. metros in 2026

Photo by Max Fray on Unsplash

Dallas-Fort Worth is the most livable metro in Texas for 2026.

Americans looking for the right place to live with a good balance between location, community, and quality of life can find that right here in Dallas-Fort Worth, according to a national study from RentCafe.

The North Texas region stood out as the No. 1 most livable metro area in Texas, and the 24th most livable U.S. metro for 2026.

RentCafe's report analyzed 149 U.S. metro areas across 17 key indicators, including cost of living, income growth rates, "social association" rates, a food index, and others.

The top three most livable American metros are Washington, D.C. (No. 1); Portland, Maine (No. 2); and Kansas City, Missouri (No. 3).

Here's how Dallas-Fort Worth performed in the study's three main rankings compared to the rest of the U.S.:

No. 28 – Socioeconomics
No. 38 – Quality of life
No. 52 – Location and community

According to the findings, more than a third (34.4 percent) of Dallas-Fort Worth's 8.25 million residents are renters, and less than a tenth (9.7 percent) of residents are living in poverty. The city has an unemployment rate of 4.5 percent, and less than half (45.7 percent) of DFW workers report having a "long commute."

The cost of living in Dallas-Fort Worth is 2 percent lower than the national average, the report said, and residents' income has grown 6 percent over the last five years, though the report doesn't elaborate on what those income figures are.

Based on a survey from CountyHealthRankings.com, RentCafe says Dallas residents experience about three "physically unhealthy" days on average, and an average of five "mentally unhealthy" days. Only 17.4 percent of DFW residents are reportedly "physically inactive" and 10.6 percent report they are uninsured.

Overall, 10 more Texas metros earned spots in the report, but they surprisingly all landed outside the top 100 most livable U.S. metros.

Those other Texas metro areas are:

No. 117 – Killeen
No. 125 – Corpus Christi
No. 127 – Houston
No. 130 – Austin
No. 134 – Beaumont
No. 138 – El Paso
No. 145 – Lubbock
No. 147 – San Antonio
No. 148 – Brownsville
No. 149 – McAllen

rentcafe most livable metros dallas fort worth