The Magic Month

This is the best time to sell your home in Dallas-Fort Worth

Know when to list and reap the rewards.

Paul Bradbury/Getty Images

Everyone has a different opinion about the best time to put your home on the market, but now Zillow has determined — down to the day — when you should be sticking a "for sale" sign in the yard.

May 1-15 is the ideal timeframe for Dallas-Fort Worth, which matches up with the national average. Listing your home in those two weeks will results in it selling nine days quicker, and for $2,400 more, than any other time of the year.

Really want to maximize your listing's exposure? Go live on a Saturday. That will earn you an average of 20 percent more views in the first week on market than if you listed earlier in the week.

"With 3 percent fewer homes on the market than last year, 2017 is shaping up to be another competitive buying season," says Zillow chief economist Dr. Svenja Gudell in a release. "Many homebuyers who started looking for homes in the early spring will still be searching for their dream home months later. By May, some buyers may be anxious to get settled into a new home — and will be more willing to pay a premium to close the deal."

Even though the findings may seem obvious, Zillow nonetheless dug through historical listing, sale, and Zestimate data of single-family homes and condos between 2008 and 2016 to calculate how listing dates influence the time on market and final sale price.

And while DFW mirrors the U.S. as a whole, not every big city prefers a Saturday in early May. Bostonians, for example, like to get their home shopping done on a Wednesday in late April, and homebuyers in Miami-Fort Lauderdale are ready to go by early March. Texas' milder weather patterns give us more flexibility to list, because our lack of a distinct climate change shows little variation in sale price based on the listing month.

No Cap

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

trends