Meeting demand

Dallas nails ranking as second busiest home construction market in U.S.

DFW issued nearly 44,000 construction permits for single-family homes in 2020.

Photo by Ralph Bivins

New single-family homes are popping up like mushrooms around Dallas-Fort Worth, with the region nailing down its status as one of the busiest home construction markets in the country.

Data from the National Association of Home Builders shows DFW issued 43,884 construction permits for single-family homes in 2020. That puts DFW at No. 2 among U.S. metro areas for single-family construction permits handed out last year.

Only the Houston area ranked higher, with 48,208 permits for construction of single-family homes. The Austin area ranked fifth (21,653 permits).

Despite last year’s flood of single-family construction permits, homebuilders in Texas are having trouble keeping up with “the phenomenal demand,” says Ben Caballero, founder and CEO of Dallas-based HomesUSA.com.

The Texas Real Estate Research Center says that across the state, the number of single-family homes that began construction in 2020 grew 18.9 percent compared with 2019. DFW saw its single-family home starts skyrocket 21 percent last year compared with 2019, with the Houston area close behind at 20.2 percent.

Although last year’s new-home construction pace was slower last year in Austin than in DFW and Houston, the Austin area led the state’s major metros on a per-capita basis with more than 21,300 single-family homes getting underway.

Low mortgage rates and robust population growth boosted housing demand across the state last year, the center says. And this year, demographic trends like the aging millennial population and out-of-state migration will continue to propel housing demand, the center says.

Statewide, the number of single-family home permits is expected to rise about 15 percent this year versus 2020, Luis Torres, research economist at the Texas Real Estate Research Center, says in a release.

“Homebuilders are trying to satisfy demand in the lower price [categories] by building homes in the suburbs or outer city borders where land costs are lower,” Torres says. “This trend was prevalent before the pandemic but has become even more widely adopted over the past year.”

Torres predicts an 8.4 percent jump this year in single-family home sales around the state.

In January, Austin ranked second among 20 major U.S. markets tracked by housing data provider Zonda for the year-over-year increase in pending sales of new homes (42.3 percent). Only Jacksonville, Florida, ranked higher (45.8 percent). Dallas landed at No. 6 (34.9 percent) and Houston at No. 11 (21.4 percent).

“The housing market is incredibly hot today in virtually every metro across the country. Builders are eagerly out shopping for land to better match supply with demand,” says Ali Wolf, Zonda’s chief economist.

Zonda data shows that in January, Dallas was the state’s most undersupplied market in terms of lots available for new homes, with Austin and Houston not that far behind. Dallas, Austin, and Houston all fell into the “significantly undersupplied” category for vacant home lots.

That lack of supply hasn’t stopped homebuilders from marching ahead with construction. For instance:

The 95-acre Chalk Hill master-planned community in the DFW suburb of Celina will offer 440 single-family homes.
The first phase of the 454-acre, mixed-use Parmer Ranch project is getting underway in the Austin suburb of Georgetown. That phase will feature 155 single-family homes. The project eventually will contain 1,000 single-family homes.
The 564-acre, master-planned Beacon Hill community ultimately will bring roughly 1,000 single-family homes to the Houston suburb of Waller.

rankings home-for-sale

Hottest Headlines of 2025

Popular suburbs move into Dallas' hottest real estate headlines of 2025

Photo courtesy of City of McKinney

undefined

Editor's note: As the year comes to a close, we look back at the 10 most-read real estate stories in Dallas for 2025 — including new honors for several local suburbs, market trends, and all-important Walmart news. These are the 10 hottest real estate headlines of 2025 in Dallas:

1. Dallas-Fort Worth suburb blooms as No. 1 best place to live in U.S. One Dallas-area city took the top slot on a list of "the 100 Best Places to Live in 2025." The list — from relocation marketing platform Livability.com — put Flower Mound at No. 1 for its appealing size and affordability. The suburb also claimed the No. 7 spot in a ranking of America's most livable small cities.

2. North Dallas neighbor ranks as No. 1 most affordable city in U.S. A Dallas suburb landed on top of a list of the most affordable places to live: McKinney ranked No. 1 based on its relative cost of living and high median household income.

3. Massive mixed-use development coming to key intersection in McKinney. McKinney is getting a new $1.3 billion mixed-use development. Called Long Branch, it will be a 155-acre project at the northwest corner of US-75 and the future 380 bypass, consisting of housing, retail, office, grocery, and hospitality. The development has 80 acres slated for active development, and will unfold over the next decade in four tracts.

4. Dallas-area suburb ranks as 3rd best place to live in Texas in 2025. The Dallas-Fort Worth mid-city of Coppell has been ranked the third best place to live in Texas in 2025 by rankings and review website Niche.com. The survey determined the best places to live in based on crime rates, public school rankings, the local cost of living, job opportunities, and more using data from the U.S. Census Bureau, the FBI, and others.

Coppell, Dallas suburb Coppell was ranked the third-best place to live in Texas for 2025. City of Coppell, TX Municipal Government/Facebook

5. 11 Dallas suburbs soar as fastest-growing U.S. cities in last decade. It's no secret that Dallas-Fort Worth's population is growing faster than most other metros in the U.S., but now several surprising Dallas neighbors have been named among the top 10 fastest-growing suburb nationwide over the last decade. Celina nearly led the nation with an astonishing 314 percent increase in population from 2014 to 2023, according to a growth study by marketplace platform StorageCafe.

6. Dallas neighbor is the No. 1 fastest-growing affordable city in U.S. A national study has declared Texas is home to the most affordable, fast-growing cities in the country, with Dallas suburb Frisco taking the lead at No. 1. Frisco and five more Dallas neighbors ranked high on GoBankingRates.com's list of "50 Most Affordable, Fastest-Growing Cities in 2025."

$Millennials moved to Texas more than any other state in 2019, with Frisco being\na top choice.$ Frisco is the most-affordable, fastest-growing city in the country. Photo by Roger Robinson/Visit Frisco

7. Dallas neighbor beckons movers as top U.S. suburb with small-town feel. Wylie, a city less than 30 miles from downtown Dallas, ranked as the No. 7 most highly sought-after U.S. suburb of 2025 in MoveBuddha's national survey. In addition to being recognized as the 7th most desirable American suburb, Wylie also ranked as the second-most desirable suburb to move to in Texas.

8. 2 Dallas neighbors rank among fastest-growing wealthy suburbs in U.S. Celina and Prosper, two boomtowns north of Dallas, are among the top three fastest growing affluent suburbs in the country. The cities' affluent status was unveiled in a GoBankingRates' study ranking the "30 Fastest-Growing Wealthy Suburbs in America" for 2025.

The Old Celina Park in Celina, Texas Celina is the No. 2 fastest-growing wealthy 'burb in America. Photo courtesy of celina-tx.gov

9. 6 Dallas suburbs make top 10 list of best Texas cities to move to. Advisors at ConsumerAffairs, a customer review and news platform, ranked the 50 most populated Texas cities across five main categories — affordability, safety, economy, health care and education, and quality of life — to determine which were the best places to move to. Each city was given a score out of 100 possible points. Four of the top five best places to move to in Texas are located in Dallas-Fort Worth: Allen (No .1), Frisco (No. 2), Plano (No. 3), and McKinney (No. 4). Two more DFW suburbs, Mansfield (No. 6) and Richardson (No. 10), rounded out the top 10.

10. Booming Celina hits the big time with its first Walmart Supercenter. The city of Celina is getting its first mega Walmart: According to a release, it will be a Walmart Supercenter located at the northwest corner of Preston Road (Highway 289) and the West Outer Loop. The store has been in the works for a few years, but the Celina Economic Development Corporation celebrated the opening in a groundbreaking on April 16.