Ranking It

Where is it great to be a first-time homebuyer? All over North Texas.

As anyone looking for a house in Dallas-Fort Worth right now can tell you, the real estate market here is red hot. And according to a new study by WalletHub, the suburbs surrounding Dallas are some of the best cities in the country for first-time buyers.

In fact, North Texas nabbed five of the top 10 slots and nine of the top 20: Allen ranks No. 2, followed by Frisco (5), Plano (6), Carrollton (7), McKinney (8), Grand Prairie (11), Richardson (12), Garland (17) and Arlington (20).

Denton and Irving landed at Nos. 23 and 24, respectively, while Fort Worth came in at No. 42. Dallas brought up the rear at No. 93. The No. 1 city for first-time homebuyers is Overland Park, Kansas.

The WalletHub study looked at 300 American cities and determined the rankings using three general categories: housing affordability, real estate market and living environment. If the rankings had been based solely on the market, Dallas would have come in at No. 2. But an abysmal ranking of 282 in housing affordability and a 76 in living environment sent the city plummeting.

Three Dallas suburbs rank in the top five for highest median annual income (adjusted for cost of inflation): Frisco (No. 1), Allen (No. 3) and McKinney (No. 5). Frisco also scored well (No. 2) for highest median home-price appreciation. Dallas was not too far behind, at No. 5.

With multiple big companies moving into the northern 'burbs and property values heading northward, first-time home buyers might need to act fast to take advantage of the current market friendliness.

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To-Go News

Dallas ghost kitchen to open spinoff in Fairview with innovative extras

Revolving Kitchen

One ghost kitchen coming up (to Fairview).

A trend-setting ghost kitchen that's served many a meal to Dallas diners is expanding: Revolving Kitchen, a locally-owned outfit that first debuted in Garland in 2020, will spin off a second location in the northern 'burb of Fairview with some extra features that break the mold of the ghost kitchen concept.

According to a release, it'll open at Fairview Town Center at 184 Town Place, in summer 2023.

Revolving Kitchen is a commissary kitchen and virtual food hall founded by Tyler Shin, with a goal of helping food entrepreneurs start up a business. They rent out kitchens for private use on a short-term (hourly) or long-term basis, which includes infrastructure, equipment, and resources.

The Garland location has 25 commercial kitchens, serving sushi, crabcakes, BBQ, wings, pudding, Bundt cakes, salad in a cup, and more.

Dubbed Revolving Kitchen 2.0, the Fairview location will be larger, with 37,000 square feet and 34 fully-equipped commercial kitchens, in five different sizes ranging from 260 to 1,100 square feet. It'll also have mezzanine area for offices.

Like Garland, the new Fairview location will have a designated grab-and-go marketplace area with items from Revolving Kitchen's tenant restaurants for purchase.

But it will also have some ground-breaking innovations:

full service bar serving alcoholic beverages
indoor dining room
glass enclosed showroom kitchen in the middle of the dining room for cooking classes, chef demos, and restaurant tastings

The restaurants will be integrated into Revolving Kitchen's Virtual Food Hall app, allowing customers to bundle items together from various Revolving Kitchen restaurants into one transaction.

Other high-tech features include kiosk ordering and an in-house robot to deliver food to the front for pick-up.

The Garland Revolving Kitchen currently has more than 20 ghost kitchens or culinary businesses, at least seven of which are expected to expand to Fairview, right along with Revolving Kitchen.

It won't stop in Fairview: Shin hopes to expand to four or five locations by the end of 2023. As part-owner of a local restaurant, he understands the hurdles.

“Dallas has lost amazing local restaurants due to high operational costs, skyrocketing real estate prices, and burdensome regulatory requirements," he says. "Revolving Kitchen is here to change that.”

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