Dallas home ownership affordability declined in a new study from RealtyHop.com.
Dallas used to be known as one of the most affordable places to buy and own a home compared with other metropolitan areas.
The Realty Hop affordability index compares median home prices and property taxes but also income level of people who live in the community to pay for those homes.
Dallas rose on the May list of least affordable places two notches to 23rd. Austin is the only Texas city higher at 20th.
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Places considered by most people to be expensive, like Seattle, Denver, and Washington D.C., still rank as more affordable, partly due to higher income in those places.
Dallas home prices have been soaring in recent years.
“And yet the median income is taking a while to catch up to that, where they don’t quite rise as quickly,” said Lee Lin, a RealtyHop founder.
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He said the affordability gap may increase in the future.
“Homes across the country are getting less affordable with rising rates and uncertainty in the economy,” Lin said.
A change is obvious in many established Dallas neighborhoods, where big expensive new houses are replacing more affordable older homes.
The big new ones also increase property tax values for the existing neighbors, another factor in affordability.
But Ashley Gentry, incoming president of the North Texas real estate association MetroTex Realtors, said Dallas still has options.
“There is still affordable housing. It just might not be in the same area that it was 10 years ago,” Gentry said.
She said the high cost of homeowners insurance is another factor in Texas.
But property tax relief pending in the Texas Legislature might offer some help for affordability as newcomers keep arriving in the Lone Star State.
“We are also one of the most stable economies. People are still coming here. Net migration, we are the second state everyone is coming to, right behind Florida. We might be number one at one point,” Gentry said.
Fort Worth, Irving, Arlington, Plano and Garland are more affordable North Texas options in the RealtyHop list.
