May Magic

Listing your Dallas home during these days could mean extra cash

On your mark, get set, list.

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The real estate website Zillow has long been studying when is the most lucrative season for Dallasites to put their home on the market, and though the timing hasn't really changed this year, the numbers surrounding the dates definitely have.

May 1-15 is still the ideal timeframe for Dallas sellers, which also matches up with the national results. But if you listed your home in Big D during May 2017, you probably received about $2,400 more than if you went live during the rest of the year. In 2016, you could have counted on reaping an extra $2,000 during early May. This spring, that sum is only expected to be $1,400 — much less, and the smallest among all the markets studied.

The feeding frenzy for new listings is calming down this year too. Sticking the for-sale sign in your yard this May could mean you sell 7.5 days faster than other months, but in years past the race to close was more like two weeks.

Nationally, homes are maintaining their pre-2018 stats. Zillow points out that an acute shortage of homes means that a large number of home shoppers will likely be unable to find the right home to buy in the early weeks of spring, and will therefore pay a premium to seal the deal before summer ends. So even though this year's extra dough isn't as much as it has been, it should still pay to list in May.

Saturday remains the strongest day to go live with your listing, both in Dallas and across much of the nation. Only Boston bucks the trend with Wednesday as its most attractive debut. In St. Louis, home shoppers won't really get serious until the first half of June, while in Pittsburgh many of the deals have already been done — March 16-31 was Steel City's magic window.

home-for-sale reports zillow

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

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