Dallas is one of the cities in the U.S. that people are, as Dumb and Dumber's Lloyd Christmas would say, flocking to like the salmon of Capistrano. Why, then, are the homeownership rates for the Dallas-Fort Worth area dropping? Over the last six years, Dallas-Fort Worth’s homeownership rates have dropped by almost 10 percent. Some 56 percent of the residents in the area are homeowners, eight percent below the national average of 64 percent, HousingWire reports.
A big part of the problem has to do with the rate at which prices are increasing in the North Texas city. Home values rose 10 percent from January 2015 and Dallas now has the second highest home prices in Texas (only Austin has more expensive homes). As employment rises and more people head to Dallas for work, home values are only going to continue to increase, which means there will continue to be a shift toward renting.
The median household income in Texas is around $86,000, which helps to explain why only 20 percent of home sales in 2015 were to first-time buyers. Additionally, Millennials are not buying despite a report from Zillow that showed around 72 percent of people aged 18-34 would love to own a home. Even in light of this, the median age for Texas buyers in 2015 was 45.
Right now there seem to be two main options for people in Dallas who are unable to afford a home: either rent or live in the suburbs and commute to work.
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