Apartment Abundance

The 10 biggest fancy apartment complexes blow up Dallas housing market

Common space at Elan City Lights apartments in Dallas

Elan City Lights is the biggest apartment building to go up in Dallas last year.

Photo courtesy of Elan City Lights

That rental reprieve that was forecasted for 2016 might have something to do with the number of apartments constructed in Dallas in 2015. Although not quite as busy as they were in 2014, when they built more than 6,000 units, developers still erected 19 buildings with more than 50-plus units each, totaling 5,351 new apartments this past year.

RentCafe looked at the newcomers to determine the 10 largest contributors to the rental market, using data from "apartment market intelligence source" Yardi Matrix. Let's just say there are some behemoth new living choices in Dallas.

Elan City Lights, on Live Oak near the Latino Cultural Center, is the biggest, with 424 units and a whopping 320,737 total square feet. The LEED-proposed Silver 3700M, on McKinney Avenue in Uptown, is close behind, with 381 units spread out over 340,864 square feet. The Alexan Fairmount comes in third, with 368 units, most of which are one-bedroom apartments.

Not all of these new complexes are in and around downtown; Lake Highlands, Prestonwood, and Addison all make appearances on the top 10 list, which includes these:

Olympus at Ross, 368 rental units
NorthRock Lake Highlands, 362 rental units
Locale, near Lemmon and Dallas North Tollway, 348 rental units
SkyHouse Dallas, near the Perot Museum, 336 rental units
Aura Prestonwood, 322 rental units
VV&M Boutique Residential Living, by Montfort and Belt Line, 310 rental units
One Dallas Center, near Bryan and St. Paul, 276 rental units

All told, these 10 properties account for 3,500 of the new units constructed in 2015. As is to be expected, all of these apartment communities boast top-of-the-line finishes and perks: tanning beds, relaxation gardens, granite and quartz countertops, fitness and yoga studios, and dog runs.

downtown reports high-rises rent

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Dallas was a top-10 destination for Gen Zers on the move for 2023

Photo by Lance Asper on Unsplash

Who wouldn't want to live in a Gen Z paradise like Dallas?

As Gen Z enters adulthood, many are flocking to the nation's biggest cultural hubs like New York City, Los Angeles — and now Dallas, which had the ninth-highest inflow of Gen Zers in 2023.

Dallas' new reputation as a Gen Z hotspot was unveiled in a recent report by American home improvement brand This Old House, which analyzed migration trends across multiple generations using 2023 U.S. Census Bureau data.

Dallas saw an influx of 13,770 Gen Z residents last year to become the generation's No. 9 most popular city. That's 4,223 more Gen Zers than the net migration rate from 2022, the report found.

Real estate marketplace Zillow seems to agree on a statewide scale, declaring Texas as the No. 1 destination for Gen Zers on the move in 2024.

However, as Gen Z Dallasites may have learned, it's going to take a big bite out of their paychecks to live in such a highly sought after city. A March RentCafe housing cost analysis predicted Gen Z adults living in Dallas are likely to spend over $149,000 on rent by the time they are 30 years old.

While Dallas saw big gains in its Gen Z population last year, many other big cities saw a mass exodus. Plano, for example — which gained 1,295 Gen Z residents in 2022 — lost 4,028 Gen Zers in 2023, the report discovered.

The biggest Gen-Z exodus was in El Paso, with a drop of 5,607 — "a sharp turn from 2022 when the city saw an increase," the report said. "Other cities, including Plano, Texas; Memphis, Tennessee; McKinney, Texas; and Wichita, Kansas, are seeing similar declines."

"Gen X, baby boomers, and the Silent Generation are also moving away from major cities, particularly New York City and Washington, D.C.," the report said. "They’re heading to some of the same cities as Gen Z, including Houston and Jacksonville, Florida."

The top 10 cities that gained the most Gen Z residents in 2023 are:

No. 1 – New York City, New York
No. 2 – Los Angeles, California
No. 3 – Houston, Texas
No. 4 – Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
No. 5 – Chicago, Illinois
No. 6 – San Diego, California
No. 7 – Seattle, Washington
No. 8 – Charlotte, North Carolina
No. 9 – Dallas, Texas
No. 10 – Minneapolis, Minnesota

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Dallas was a top-10 destination for Gen Zers on the move for 2023