They come, we build

Dallas-Fort Worth dethrones NYC as the nation's No. 1 spot for new apartments

LVL 29 in Plano is one of the many new apartment options in Dallas-Fort Worth.

Rendering courtesy of LVL 29

It’s not all in your head. Those new apartments you spotted on your way to work probably did just pop up — and it’s happening in big numbers in DFW and around the state, according to a new study.

RentCafe estimates 22,196 new apartments will be built in the Dallas-Fort Worth metro area by the end of 2019 — by far the highest number in the country. Seattle makes for a distant second with 13,682 new units, followed by New York City, which was No. 1 in 2018, with 13,418 units planned for this year.

And these aren’t vanity projects. With more than 80,000 new residents calling the Metroplex home for the fifth year in a row, we need all the apartments we can get.

Fort Worth slightly leads the metro in terms of projected new apartment units at 3,875, compared to Dallas’ 3,859. Estimates are based on market data from Yardi Matrix, a software company that tracks multifamily properties in 133 U.S. markets.

Here are the biggest shares of new apartments expected in DFW:

Fort Worth – 3,875 units
Dallas – 3,859 units
Frisco – 2,548 units
Farmers Branch – 1,537 units
Richardson – 1,423 units
Euless – 838 units
Grapevine – 821 units
McKinney – 564 units
Plano – 483 units
Irving – 377 units
Waxahachie – 325 units

Most of Texas is booming, too. At No. 5 on RentCafe’s list is Austin, with 10,783 new units expected by the end of the year. No. 10 Houston is expected to bring 7,143 new units to the region, with about half rising just within the city of Houston. Meanwhile, 3,510 new units will be built in San Antonio, a steep decline of 41 percent from the 5,993 units built there in 2018.

Unlike the Lone Star State, the nation as a whole is seeing a slump in apartment construction. The 299,442 new apartments expected in 2019 represent an 8.2 percent drop from 2018’s 326,240 new units, which also were weaker numbers than in 2017, when 331,765 new apartments were built.

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Rent Report

Here's how many Texans are paying too much for rent, report reveals

Grace Cary/Getty Images

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Millions of Texas renters, both current residents and new arrivals, suffer from wallet whiplash.

A new report from the Texas Affiliation of Affordable Housing Providers shows 45 percent of the state’s renters spend more than 30 percent of their income on housing. Renters occupy more than 4.2 million Texas households, representing nearly half of the state’s residents.

Worse yet, 81 percent of extremely low-income households in Texas spend more than 50 percent of their income on housing, the report says. For that income group, Texas has a shortage of 864,000 affordable homes.

Thirty percent is the standard financial benchmark for spending too much income on rent, while 50 percent puts a renter in the “severely cost-burdened” bucket.

“To sustain growth and secure future prosperity, Texas will need more than 320,000 additional affordable homes [rented and owned] to address workforce housing affordability and meet the demands of a growing population,” says the report.

“Today, the state is creating thousands of new jobs,” the report adds, “but housing supply has not kept pace with demand, driving up housing costs and constraining continued economic growth.”

Not surprisingly, people who live in or move to three of Texas’ biggest metro areas get hit with the state’s highest apartment rental rates. Here’s Apartments.com’s list of the 10 most expensive places for renters in Texas, based on apartments whose average size ranges from 713 square feet in Austin to 771 square feet in Plano:

1. Frisco — $1,477 per month
2. Plano — $1,461 per month
3. Austin — $1,417 per month
4. Dallas — $1,413 per month
5. McKinney — $1,363 per month
6. Grand Prairie — $1,327 per month
7. Irving — $1,318 per month
8. Garland — $1,237 per month
9. Fort Worth — $1,217 per month
10. Houston — $1,183 per month

San Antonio boasts some of the lowest average rent among Texas’ 10 most affordable markets: $1,075 per month. Mesquite, a Dallas-Fort Worth suburb, also fits into that category, with average monthly rent of $1,052.

Earlier this month, Gov. Greg Abbott announced more than $114 million in grants to help develop or rehabilitate properties, providing more than 4,400 affordable rental units.

“As our state grows, we must ensure that Texans have access to the affordable housing they need to thrive,” Abbott says.

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