There's an App For That

'Speed date' your way to your new Dallas-Fort Worth dream home

Thinking about buying or selling a home? You're not alone. Roughly 60 percent of Americans move between May and August, and that high number is even more likely to happen in Dallas-Fort Worth, where the real estate market is red-hot.

Luckily, how you go about buying and selling has evolved — there's an app for that now. After browsing listings online, home shoppers who want to go and physically tour available houses can use Opendoor to essentially "speed date" their way to their dream home.

It used to be that house-hunting was a long and grinding process, one that involved giving up precious weekends to tour open houses and private showings. Now, with Opendoor, you can use the app as a key and visit for-sale homes in DFW on your schedule, any time between the hours of 6 am and 9 pm. That's 15 hours a day, seven days a week — it doesn't get more convenient than that.

Simply download the Opendoor app and fire up the map to find the homes you want to tour. Also keep an eye out for the blue Opendoor sign on for-sale homes across Dallas-Fort Worth. At the front door, use the app as your key to access and tour the home. Stay five minutes or 50, and return as many times as you'd like (remember to bring a tape measure to check if your couch and other furniture will fit). It's an open house that's entirely on your terms.

Since buying a home is a really big decision, it makes sense that you'll probably need more than a quick 20 minutes to decide if this is the right home for the next five, 10, or 20 years of your life. With the Opendoor app, you can come back to see the home every day, at different times of the day, to decide if it really is your dream home.

Opendoor has been in Dallas since 2015, and buyers love the experience (tens of thousands of local homebuyers have used it). Real estate agents also love it, because they can show their clients 10 homes on a day when before they may have only been able to see one or two. It's a win-win for everyone. Currently, Opendoor has nearly 300 homes on the market across DFW, so there are tons of homes available to tour, every day of the week.

While Opendoor is super easy for buyers, it's just as easy if you have a home to sell. Go to Opendoor.com, type in your home address, and in less than 48 hours you'll get a fair market offer and can sell the home in just a few days.

And that's not all: Opendoor wants you to love your new home and eliminate buyer's remorse in real estate, so they offer a 30-day money-back guarantee. You won't find anything else like that in Dallas.

Tour homes on your schedule.

Photo courtesy of Opendoor

Tour homes on your schedule.

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millennial magnet

Dallas ranks among 15 hottest U.S. metros for millennial homebuyers

Photo by Vitaly Gariev on Unsplash

Dallas is one of the 15 hottest destinations for millennials.

Dallas and its surrounding cities have already proved to be a magnet for millennials, and now a new national housing report has established the city as one of the 15 hottest destinations for millennials, whose local homeownership rate has soared since 2018.

The number of millennials who own their homes in Dallas has grown from 229,497 to 451,826 households over the last five years (96.9 percent), according to a new housing analysis from RentCafe.

The study compared homeowner growth rates versus renter growth rates of millennials — based on Pew Research Center's definition as individuals born between 1981 and 1996 — across 107 U.S. metro areas from 2018 to 2023.

Dallas ranked No. 15 in the overall list of U.S. metros that have seen the highest increase in millennial homeowners since 2018. About 47 percent of all Dallas-area millennials own their homes, with the remaining 53 percent renting, the report found.

"The top 20 metro areas with the greatest increases in Millennial homeownership are led by sunny regions in Florida and California," the report said. "Unexpected urban hubs such as Dallas, San Antonio, Philadelphia, and New York also made the list with ownership growth rates reaching 90 percent or higher."

Dallas also ranked 27th in the national list of cities with the biggest growth rates among millennial-age renters. The number of millennial renter households jumped from 465,560 to 507,416 in five years, a 9 percent hike.

About 5.3 million millennials have become homeowners over the last five years nationwide, RentCafe's analysts said, which represents a massive 74 percent increase in millennial-owned households. The growth rate of renters was much lower in comparison.

"At the same time, the number of millennial renters in the U.S. rose by a modest 5 percent, adding approximately 600,000 households," RentCafe said. "This brings the total number of millennial homeowner households to 12.4 million, close to the 12.6 million millennial renter households."

While the rate of millennial homeowners is on the rise, the same can't be said for Gen Zers. About 12 percent of all Gen Z households in Dallas-Fort Worth own their homes, while the vast majority are renters, a separate RentCafe study found.

Elsewhere across the state, Austin (No. 7) and San Antonio (No. 10) ranked among the top 10 U.S. cities with the biggest growth rates among millennial homeowners.

The top 10 U.S. metros with the highest gains in millennial homeowners are:

No. 1 – North Port, Florida
No. 2 – Lakeland, Florida
No. 3 – Jacksonville, Florida
No. 4 – Stockton, California
No. 5 – Oxnard, California
No. 6 – Palm Bay, Florida
No. 7 – Austin, Texas
No. 8 – Tuscon, Arizona
No. 9 – Deltona, Florida
No. 10 – San Antonio, Texas

rentcafe study real estate housing report millennials dallas