More home for less money

Here’s how much house you can buy in Dallas for $250,000

Dallas offers a pretty good bang for your buck among Texas' major metro areas.

Photo by Ariel Skelley/Getty

As Texas' popularity grows, so does cost of living in the cities seeing population booms. And a new study shows just how much bang for your buck you can get in each major metro area.

A study released July 7 by the PropertyShark real estate website shows that $250,000 will get Dallas buyers a 1,722 square-foot house. And while that's not nearly as much as you'd get in San Antonio (2,503 square feet) or Houston (2,318 square feet), it sure beats Austin, where buyers get a mere 1,139 square feet for the same price.

While Austin’s position in the PropertyShark study is worse than every other big city in Texas, it’s considerably better than places like New York City, San Francisco, and Los Angeles. In Manhattan, $250,000 would enable you to buy a home the size of a hotel room — 232 square feet. The situation isn’t much better in San Francisco, where $250,000 would get you a 269-square-foot home. In Los Angeles, that dollar amount would let you purchase a 524-square-foot home.

PropertyShark’s data includes single-family homes, duplexes, condos, and townhouses.

“In the country’s most populated cities with more than 900,000 residents, the difference in price per square foot between coastal cities and Texas cities is miles apart,” PropertyShark notes. “As expected, vast Texas leads the way in providing the most space for the lowest price. In fact, in every Texas city we analyzed, $250,000 will buy more than 1,000 square feet.”

In DFW, Arlington is the city where buyers can get the most bang for their buck — 2,240 square feet, the survey says. Arlington is on a roll. In a recent SmartAsset report of the best 25 big cities in the United States to buy an affordable family home, the city ranked sixth in the country and No. 1 in DFW.

Here’s how all the cities in Texas’ four largest metro areas — including DFW —compared when it comes to the amount of space you can score for $250,000:

San Antonio, 2,503 square feet
Houston, 2,318 square feet
Arlington, 2,240 square feet
Garland, 2,218 square feet
Fort Worth, 2,109 square feet
Irving, 2,072 square feet
Dallas, 1,722 square feet
Plano, 1,657 square feet
Austin, 1,139 square feet

Looking at the country’s 100 largest cities, San Antonio ranks 15th nationwide for the amount of square footage available for $250,000. Detroit sits atop the list. There, you can buy a 5,407-square-foot home for $250,000, PropertyShark says.

All four major metro areas enjoyed robust home sales volume in 2019.

In Dallas-Fort Worth, single-family home sales totaled 103,261 last year, up 3 percent from 2018, the Texas Association of Realtors says.

“Dallas-Fort Worth winds up with record sales again,” James Gaines, chief economist at Texas A&M University’s Real Estate Center, said in January, in pre-pandemic times, of course. “The Dallas side of the Metroplex was actually a little better than Fort Worth.”

lists home-for-sale rankings

Rent report

Texas opens the door to more renters than any other state, report says

Renters, renting, rent, buying a house, homeowners

Photo by Vitaly Gariev on Unsplash

Texas remains attractive to renters thanks to factors such as affordability, job growth, and apartment availability.

Texas reigns as the country’s No. 1 magnet for renters. According to an Apartments.com analysis, Texas gained nearly 73,000 net new renters from 2023 to 2024.

That figure, pulled from U.S. Census Bureau data, takes into account people who moved to and away from Texas.

Apartments.com says Texas remains attractive to renters thanks to factors such as affordability, job growth, and apartment availability. Many of these renters arrive from high-cost states like California and New York.

Among the state’s four major metro areas:

Dallas-Fort Worth rent growth recently slipped into negative territory as a wave of new apartments hit the market. “With modern housing choices backed by a strong job market that supports income growth, it’s easy to see why renters are flocking to Dallas,” says Apartments.com.
Houston continues to stand out nationally for relative affordability and high apartment availability. “Though the city has seen growth in recent years, a steady supply of apartment communities has kept rents low,” according to Apartments.com.
San Antonio now has the highest vacancy rate among major U.S. apartment markets (15.7 percent).
Austin continues to see widespread financial incentives for new renters, with more than 60 percent of properties offering one to two months’ free rent.

“Taken together, the data suggests Texas is entering a new housing phase: Demand remains strong, but the state’s massive apartment buildout is beginning to give renters more leverage than they’ve had in years,” Apartments.com says.

According to Apartment List, these are the top sources, in descending order, of new renters for each of Texas’ four major metros:

Dallas — Houston, Austin, New York City.
Austin — Dallas, Houston, San Antonio.
Houston — Dallas, Austin, New York City.
San Antonio — Austin, Houston, Dallas.

“For renters looking to move out of California, Texas was the most popular destination, edging out neighboring Nevada and Arizona,” Apartment List says.