Building momentum

Texas gains big recognition as one of top states for tiny homes

This is what a tiny treehouse oasis could look like.

Photo by Thanin Viriyaki Photography

Tiny homes keep popping up across Texas. In downtown Lake Dallas, for instance, about a dozen families have settled into a tiny home village billed as the first center-of-the-city development of its kind. In the Austin area, several tiny home communities are already open or are in the works.

A new ranking indicates Lake Dallas and the Austin area are onto something. IPX1031, a financial services provider for real estate investors, puts Texas at No. 2 on its list of the best states for tiny homes.

“Sure, everything might be bigger in Texas, but that doesn’t mean your home has to be,” IPX1031 says. “With an average tiny home cost of $48,120 and a median income of $64,034, you can get the most bang for your buck when it comes to tiny living in Texas.”

Georgia grabs the No. 1 spot on the list. IPX1031 based its ranking on each state’s average cost to buy a tiny home, median income, cost of living, average annual temperature, and percentage of parkland.

While Texas takes second place in the ranking of the best states for tiny homes, it doesn’t rank highly for interest in this style of living. A review of Google search activity by IPX1031 pinpointed Vermont as the state where residents are most curious about tiny homes, followed by New Hampshire, Maine, Wyoming, Washington, Idaho, Montana, Oregon, Rhode Island, and Alaska.

A survey last year by IPX1031 found that 56 percent of Americans would live in a tiny home, with affordability cited as the No. 1 reason. Most tiny homes measure 400 square feet or less. By one estimate, tiny homes make up about 1 percent of the U.S. home market.

By the way, Texas’ richest resident, Tesla and SpaceX leader Elon Musk, on November 13 swatted down speculation that he’s living in a Boxabl tiny house along the Gulf Coast. While hailing Boxabl as a “cool product,” Musk tweeted that he’s been living in a small $50,000 home in South Texas for the past two years.

“Feels more homey to live in a small house,” Musk told his 64.5 million Twitter followers.

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renter report

This is how dramatically Dallas rent prices have dropped since last year

Photo by Malcolm Shadrach on Unsplash

Rent is falling in Texas as a whole, with Dallas among the top three cities with the biggest declines in August.

A new Zumper rent report has revealed that Texas is leading the nation in annual rent declines since 2025, and Dallas rent prices have fallen as much as 13 percent since last August.

Zumper's monthly report analyzes one- and two-bedroom rent prices from the previous month across 100 U.S. cities, and tracks one-month and year-over-year changes.

Austin, Houston, and Dallas, respectively, locked out the top three cities where one-bedroom rent prices have plummeted more than anywhere else in the country.

A one-bedroom apartment in Dallas had a $1,270 monthly rent price in August, down 13 percent since this time last year. Two-bedroom units were 13.4 percent cheaper than they were a year ago and now sit at $1,810 per month.

The reports findings show a similar pattern across Texas' biggest metros as "elevated multifamily supply" was "absorbed through the boom years." Renters currently have the advantageous opportunity to negotiate lower rent from their landlords, according to Zumper CEO Shawn Mullahy.

"Texas is showing exactly what happens when supply materially outruns demand," Mullahy said. "Austin, Houston and Dallas added enormous amounts of inventory, and renters now have leverage because owners are competing to fill it. That won’t reverse until enough of that supply is absorbed."

Elsewhere in the Dallas-area, rent prices for a one-bedroom unit in Plano have dipped 7.1 percent since last year to $1,310. Single-bedroom units in Irving are renting for $1,210 a month, or 4.7 percent lower than they were the year before.

Across town in Fort Worth and Arlington, one-bedroom units had a monthly asking price of $1,160 and $1,080 in August. Arlington's one-bedroom rent price is unchanged from 2025, and Fort Worth's is down 3.3 percent.

This is how much it cost for a two-bedroom unit across DFW in August, compared to the previous year:

Plano: $1,920 per month, down 3.5 percent
Irving: $1,620 per month, down 4.7 percent
Fort Worth: $1,530 per month, down 5.5 percent
Arlington: $1,460 per month, down 2.8 percent

Rent prices across Texas
Austin tops the U.S. with the steepest decline in both one- and two-bedroom rent prices in August. A one-bedroom unit in Texas' capital city had a $1,260 monthly price, down 16.6 percent from August 2025. Rent for a two-bedroom unit declined even further, by 19.1 percent, to $1,610 per month.

One-bedroom apartments in Houston weren't far behind. Rent for a single-bedroom unit dipped 14.6 percent year-over-year to $1,050, and the price for a two-bedroom unit fell 5.4 percent to $1,400.

In San Antonio, single-bedroom rent prices fell 8.6 percent to $960 per month, and two-bedroom rent declined by 4.5 percent to $1,260.

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