Dallas-Fort Worth blew the roof off housing growth in past decade, says report

In the past decade, the Dallas-Fort Worth housing market has grown up and out, but it's not suffering an "affordability crisis" that other parts of the country are experiencing, a report says. A new ranking puts DFW at No. 9 in the U.S. for the addition of homes — houses, apartments, condos, and the like — from 2010 to 2020.

During that period, DFW saw a 17.5 percent spike in the number of housing units, according to a report released June 8 by Apartment List. North Texas shares ninth place with the McAllen metro area for the most housing growth from 2010 to 2020. Apartment List analyzed data for the top 100 U.S. metro areas.

From 2010 to 2020, the housing stock in DFW expanded by nearly 440,000 units, the report shows. Last year, the region had more than 2.9 million housing units.

Most of that growth happened outside Dallas County. The number of housing units in Dallas County climbed 11.9 percent, while the number soared 20.9 percent across all other DFW counties, according to the report.

In the region, the number of new housing units shot up the most in Rockwall County (39 percent). Not coincidentally, Rockwall last fall ranked No. 4 on Money magazine's list of Best Places to Live in America based on its status as "one of the fastest-growing cities in one of the nation’s fastest-growing states.”

Interestingly, DFW was one of only four large metro areas where there were enough homes built to match local job growth. To determine whether markets have been growing fast enough, the report's authors compared the new housing unit data from the Census Bureau with labor market data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

"Since many households include more than one working adult, a healthy, sustainable ratio of housing to job growth is one new housing unit for every 1-2 new jobs," they say. "A market that adds fewer homes may experience an undersupply of housing and a crunch on affordability."

In Dallas, 1.8 jobs have been added for every new housing unit, "indicating that the area is building sufficient new housing to keep pace with demand," they say.

Throughout Texas, the housing supply grew 15 percent from 2010 to 2020, the report says. Hays County, in the Austin metro area, ranks as the Texas county with the most housing growth during that period (48 percent).

“Texas expanded its housing inventory with rapid construction in the suburban areas surrounding its major metropolitan regions, a trend mirrored in other large markets. Dense pockets of growth can be seen around the Dallas and Houston metros, and along the corridor between Austin and San Antonio,” according to the report.

Provo, Utah, sits atop the Apartment List ranking, with the number of housing units rising 29.9 percent from 2010 to 2010. Austin ranks second (29.4 percent), Houston comes in at No. 5 (19.9 percent), and San Antonio ties for No. 28 (10.9 percent).