Your Expert Guide

Old East Dallas: Where Dallas history lives on the front porch

There are so many great places to live in Dallas that it helps to have an expert on your side. The Neighborhood Guide presented by Briggs Freeman Sotheby's International Realty gives you insider access from the agents who live and work there, providing in-the-know info about your possible new community.

Photo courtesy of Briggs Freeman Sotheby's International Realty

5112 Swiss Ave. is located in the Swiss Avenue Historic District.

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For close to 30 years, real estate agent Elizabeth Mast has called East Dallas home, and she has watched it grow and transform into a vibrant, energetic place while still holding onto its soul.

"I love living in East Dallas because of its unmatched sense of community and the passion of the people who call it home," she says. "What makes this area so special is how fiercely the residents protect its beauty, history, and character. It is a rare and welcoming environment where people truly care about their surroundings and each other, creating a deep, grassroots connection that simply cannot be replicated anywhere else."

Mast first fell in love with the area's historic homes and tree-lined streets, which reminded her of growing up in Michigan. When she started her career in real estate, she knew this was the community she wanted to represent. Old East Dallas was just beginning to experience gentrification, and she felt people didn't always understand it — a familiar story for neighborhoods like hers.

"I wanted to share what made Old East Dallas so special: its diversity, its wonderful mix of architectural styles, and its rich history," she says. "Above all, I wanted to help people see and appreciate what an asset this community is."

These days, Mast describes the neighborhood as historic, eclectic, and resilient — a small town in the heart of a big city.

"Tree-canopied streets, porches where neighbors gather, and the linear park along Swiss Avenue bring people together and make it easy to know one another," she says. "I also love how walkable it is, with unique shops and restaurants within easy reach."

At the heart of it all is the Swiss Avenue Historic District, established in 1905 by real estate developer Robert Munger. It became Dallas' first historic district in 1973, was designated an official Dallas Landmark District, and the entire district was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1974. But Swiss Avenue is just one part of Old East Dallas' rich heritage, which extends to the area's other historic districts.

Mast offered up a few of her personal favorites about life in Old East Dallas. Here's her guide to the area:

Where to eat & drink
"Mot Hai Ba's small scale is exactly why the food and service are so excellent," Mast says. "It feels less like a busy restaurant and more like a chef's personal kitchen right in the neighborhood. You get bold, elevated flavors in a relaxed, intimate setting where you can truly unwind and connect."

For a more laid-back pour, she points to Lakewood Landing, her pick for the best dive bar in Dallas.

Local independent spots like Juju Coffee provide small-scale, intimate spaces to linger over a pristine espresso, read the morning paper, and completely decompress away from busier commercial strips.

Where to play
For a perfect balance of movement and peace, White Rock Lake serves as the ultimate local escape with its scenic shoreline loop. It's fantastic for a steady, breezy bike ride or a long walk along the water, but the true magic lies in its quiet pockets.

"Head to the grassy lawns near Winfrey Point or Boy Scout Hill around golden hour to watch the sailboats and the sunset hit the Dallas skyline, or find the historic Bath House Cultural Center, which features a lovely balcony facing the water where you can sit and watch the ducks glide by," Mast says.

Directly on the southeastern shore of the lake, the Dallas Arboretum and Botanical Garden offers a massive sanctuary built for pure visual peace. Wander through the deeply shaded paths of the Burgess Family Garden or find a bench near the Mother Daughter Water Garden to listen to the cascading fountains. Moving into late autumn, the Arboretum becomes incredibly charming and nostalgic as the historic DeGolyer House gets fully decked out in festive decor — just remember to pre-register your vehicle's license plate under their parking system to ensure a seamless arrival.

To round out a peaceful afternoon, take a slow, therapeutic stroll down Swiss Avenue. Shaded by massive historic trees and lined with immaculate Tudor, Mediterranean, and Prairie School estates, it offers a profound sense of Old-World stillness right in the heart of the city.

What to see
The Santa Fe Trail stands out because it offers a highly practical, seamless connection between nature and the city without the usual traffic or crowds.

"Branching right off the southwest corner of White Rock Lake, the trail allows riders to transition away from the busier lakeside paths and enter a wide, flat, 12-foot concrete greenway built on an old railway bed," Mast says. "The route cuts directly through historic East Dallas neighborhoods, taking cyclists under a heavy tree canopy and right past local landmarks like Willis C. Winters Park, where you always see the community active on the sports fields and tennis courts."

Because the trail utilizes well-designed underpasses, the ride remains completely uninterrupted by vehicle traffic all the way down to the terminus at Exposition Park. It ultimately delivers the perfect balance for a cyclist — a quiet, scenic neighborhood cruise that doubles as a direct, car-free corridor straight into the heart of Deep Ellum's patio and brewery scene.

Old East Dallas' hidden gem is the Aldredge House, a beautiful French Eclectic mansion at 5500 Swiss Ave. Completed in 1917, this architectural jewel of the Swiss Avenue Historic District offers a connection to the past as Dallas' first residential historic house museum.

Where to live
The Swiss Avenue Historic District showcases a diverse collection of early 20th-century residential architecture, blending major historic revival movements with American Arts and Crafts and early modern styles.

The neighborhood is particularly well-known for its prominent Tudor and English Revival homes, including English Cotswold, Jacobethan, and English country manor designs. Stately classical influences are highly visible through grand Neoclassical, Georgian, Greek, and Italian Renaissance Revival estates. Reflecting regional trends of the 1910s and 1920s, the district also prominently features Mediterranean and Spanish Mission Revival styles alongside iconic American Prairie School and Craftsman architecture. Other scattered architectural influences throughout the historic streetscape include French Eclectic, Beaux Arts, Queen Anne, and even early Art Deco accents.

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Elizabeth Mast lives, works, and plays in Old East Dallas. For more information on buying and selling a home in the area, click here, email Elizabeth.mast@att.net, or call 214-914-6075. Follow her on Facebook at Elizabeth Mast Real Estate.

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out of reach

This is how long it takes to save for a starter home in Dallas right now

Courtesy of Tri Pointe Homes

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A new national housing affordability report has confirmed something many renters already know: The possibility of owning a home is moving further out of reach for many renters across America.

Becoming a new homeowner is especially challenging for households in several major U.S. metros — including Dallas — where it now takes well over a decade to save enough money for a down payment on a starter home.

These findings were unveiled in a new study from The Julian Bond Institute for Financial Equity Research (JBI), a nonprofit research branch of the Center for Responsible Lending (CRL). The report comes as a result of its Project 2050 Survey that analyzed "Americans' financial aspirations across generations and racial groups and the obstacles they encounter in achieving them."

JBI said Americans of all generations, racial backgrounds, and ethnicities haven't given up on "this aspect of the American dream," but the journey towards becoming a homeowner is "grow[ing] exceedingly challenging." In addition to saving for a down payment and closing costs, renters must also navigate high mortgage rates and high home prices. All of these combined factors have pushed monthly payments out of reach for most families.

"There has been much coverage of the difficulty aspiring homeowners face in being able to afford the monthly payments on a home loan," the report said. "But less attention has been given to an equally important part of the housing affordability squeeze: The impact that higher home prices and the affordability crisis are having on the ability of families to save enough money to afford the upfront costs of homeownership."

Using the results from a previous 2019 survey and the most recent survey results, JBI examined how many years it would take a typical renter family to save enough money to cover a down payment and closing costs for a starter home in the U.S. and in its 10 biggest metros.

The report found that it now takes the typical Dallas renter household 12 years to save for a starter home in 2026, up from 7 years in 2019. And Dallas technically appears on the lower end of the spectrum out of the 10 biggest U.S. metros.

"Although there is some variation across these areas, even in Houston — where the years to save is the lowest — it would take the typical aspiring homeowner 11 years to save enough money to purchase a starter home," the report said. "At the opposite end of the spectrum, in Los Angeles, it would take 24 years. And in all these areas, there has been a sizable increase in the number of years required to save since 2019."

For the typical American household, it now takes 16 years to save for a starter home, a figure that has doubled since 2019. That's based on an American median renter household income of $57,991, and an estimated saving rate of 2.63 percent. The report defines the saving rate as the percentage of a family’s income that can be set aside for the purchase of a home after expenditures, assuming that aspiring homeowner families can devote 75 percent of their savings toward a home purchase.

"[This] translates to annual savings of roughly $1,525," the report found. "For such a family, it would take 16 years to accumulate enough savings to purchase a starter home [at the median price of $335,574]."

Renter households that made $42,750 in income at a 3.96 saving rate would result in $1,693 saved for the purchase of a home in 2019. By those metrics, it would take the typical renter household eight years to save for a starter home at the 2019 median price of $217,520.

This is how many years it takes to save for a starter home in the 10 biggest U.S. metros compared to 2019, from longest to shortest:

Los Angeles: 24 years, up from 14 years in 2019
New York City: 23 years, up from 10 years
Miami: 22 years, up from 10 years
Washington, D.C.: 16 years, up from 8 years
Chicago: 15 years, up from 8 years
Philadelphia: 15 years, up from 8 years
Phoenix: 15 years, up from 8 years
Atlanta: 13 years, up from 7 years
Dallas: 12 years, up from 7 years
Houston: 11 years, up from 8 years

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