Truly new digs

Dallas among leading U.S. cities with most new homes on the market, report says

Dallas boasts a wealth of new homes on the market.

Photo courtesy of NextGen Real Estate

When folks are shopping for a new home in the Dallas area, there’s a good chance they’ll wind up in a newer home.

In a new report by Homes.com, Dallas ranks No. 17 in the United States for the newest homes for sale, with 23.5 percent of listings being built in 2000 or later.

"Booming job markets, affordable housing, and higher standards of living may explain construction in many of the cities with the most newer homes for sale," the report says.

But it's still not the boom in newer homes that Houston and Austin are experiencing right now. Houston ranks No. 8 for the newest homes for sale, with 29.3 percent of listings built in 2000 or later. Austin ranks No. 4 nationally, with that percentage being 34.6.

Ranking above Austin, here are the top locations for the newest homes being sold:

New Orleans, 40.8 percent
Raleigh, North Carolina, 38.4 percent
Nashville, Tennessee, 35.4 percent

According to the National Association of Home Builders, more permits (48,208) were issued last year for new-home construction in the Houston area than anywhere else in the U.S. Dallas-Fort Worth ranked second (43,884), and Austin held the No. 5 spot (21,653).

The Texas Real Estate Research Center at Texas A&M University says single-family home sales shot up 24.6 percent in the Houston area for the first four months of this year versus the first four months of last year. That compares with 9.3 percent in Austin, 4.8 percent in Dallas-Fort Worth, and 15.4 percent in San Antonio.

A report from HomesUSA.com confirms that Dallas-Fort Worth home builders continue to see astonishing demand for new homes, as new home sales, average home prices, and the speed of sales all increased last month.

DFW's three-month moving average for "days on market" dropped from 102 days to less than 67 days in just the last year, according to the HomesUSA.com's New Home Sales Index. It’s a new record for the fastest sales pace of new homes since HomesUSA.com started reporting the data in 2017, they say.

"The demand for new homes is going to continue for many months if not years in Dallas-Fort Worth," says HomesUSA.com owner Ben Caballero in a statement. "Throughout the area, we are seeing a gold-rush response as buyers flock to new developments, because demand is far exceeding supply."

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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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