millennial movers

More millennials bought homes in Dallas than nearly any other metro in 2024

Nearly 56,000 adults aged 25-44 bought homes in Dallas-Fort Worth last year.

Dallas is turning into a haven for millennial homebuyers, a new SmartAsset housing study has found. Nearly 56,000 millennials purchased homes in the Metroplex in 2024.

The report, "Where Millennials Are Buying Homes – 2025 Study," analyzed mortgage origination data across 41 of the largest U.S. metros, ranking them based on the percentage of local people aged 25-44 who purchased a home in 2024. As a note, the study only observed conventional mortgages and not FHA, USDA, or VA loans.

The study found Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington had the second-highest number of millennial homebuyers in the U.S. last year, with a total 55,732 mortgages originated in the metro.

That's about 6,100 fewer mortgages than Houston-Pasadena-The Woodlands, which had the No. 1 highest rate of millennial home purchases nationwide in 2024, adding up to 61,826 mortgages.

The median property value of a DFW home purchased by a millennial in 2024 came out to $455,000, and the median income of a millennial homeowner was $142,000, according to the report.

Millennial Dallasites already dread being locked in as renters for the rest of their lives, and one surprising statistic found in the report backs up that fear: Only 2.33 percent of all DFW millennials bought homes last year. Furthermore, Dallas-Fort Worth placed 30th in the report's overall ranking of U.S. metros with the highest percentage of millennials who purchased homes in 2024.

For additional context, the No. 1-ranking metro was Raleigh-Cary, North Carolina with 4.5 percent of local millennials securing a mortgage last year. However, that percentage only represented 19,735 mortgages originated in 2024.

SmartAsset said U.S. metros with a high rate of millennial homebuyers may show desirability within the area's job market, housing market, and its local economy.

"In some places, 1 in every 25 residents between the ages of 25 and 44 purchased a home with a conventional mortgage just in 2024 alone," the study said. "In other major metros, less than 1 in 100 Millennial-aged residents last year. This disparity can cause divergent implications for local infrastructure, politics, and business demand among different metros."

Here's how many mortgages that were secured by millennials in Texas' other major metros in 2024:

Houston-Pasadena-The Woodlands – 61,826 mortgages
Austin-Round Rock-San Marcos – 27,196 mortgages
San Antonio-New Braunfels – 26,337 mortgages

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Safety First

2 Dallas neighbors top list of safest cities for new homeowners

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McKinney and Frisco are rated among the five safest on the list.

Roughly 15 miles separate two fast-growing Dallas-Fort Worth suburbs, McKinney and Frisco. Yet they share highly coveted territory in the safety department.

Home security system company Vivint has put McKinney at No. 2 and Frisco at No. 4 in its ranking of the safest U.S. cities for new homeowners.

Vivint analyzed 93 U.S. cities based on 2025 property crime rates, share of homeowners under 35, share of recent movers, and employment of security and fire alarm installers. Property crime rates carried the greatest weight.

McKinney and Frisco both benefited from low rates for property crimes, with McKinney at No. 2 and Frisco at No. 3 in this category. McKinney posted a rate of 680 incidents per 100,000 residents, according to Vivint, and Frisco had a rate of 789.4 incidents per 100,000 residents.

The two suburbs also tied in a few categories, which were based on metro-level data. They ranked No. 12 for employment of security and fire alarm installers; No. 29 in the recent-mover category; and No. 35 in the young-homeowner category.

McKinney and Frisco aren’t strangers to high rankings in safety studies. In 2025, a SmartAsset list of the country’s safest suburbs ranked McKinney at No. 9 and Frisco at No. 10.

Here are the rankings for other North Texas cities in the Vivint study:

Plano ranked 11th
Garland ranked 16th
Irving ranked 18th
Arlington ranked 24th
Fort Worth ranked 28th
Dallas ranked 66th

Vivint ranked Texas' other major metros as follows:

Austin ranked 20th
San Antonio ranked 53rd
Houston ranked 57th

Port St. Lucie, Florida, topped the Vivint list, thanks largely to its No. 1 showing in the category for property crime rates.

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