Texas needs to build hundreds of thousands of homes to keep up with growing demand and curb high housing costs, according to a report from Texas Comptroller Glenn Hegar’s office.
The report, released Tuesday, found Texas has had the most building permits issued for privately owned housing units since 2008. But building hasn’t kept pace with population growth, particularly in the state’s urban areas.
Texas needed 306,000 more homes as of 2023, according to one estimate cited in the report. A lack of supply for middle- and lower-income earners is at the center of the housing affordability issue, Hegar’s office said.
The median home price in Texas rose 40% between 2019 and 2023, the study found. D-FW has also felt the pressures of population growth and housing demand more acutely than other large Texas metros.
The price jump in Dallas-Fort Worth between 2020 and 2023 was higher — roughly 50%. In January 2020, the median price of a D-FW home was just over $267,000. Today, it has topped $400,000.
From 2020 to 2023, D-FW led all U.S. metro areas in population growth and net domestic migration. It topped an estimated 8 million residents last year.
The Dallas Morning News recently spoke with a North Texas builder, a potential home buyer, a real estate and finance professor, multiple housing research firms and two city of Dallas officials to better understand how the region’s residential market is performing.
The News found:
- D-FW has been among the nation’s leaders in apartment and single-family housing production. But it isn’t enough. Over 367,000 new homes and 181,000 apartments have been built in the last decade. By one estimate, the D-FW metro area is still short almost 50,000 units.
- The shortage is particularly felt by the region’s poorest. Dallas nonprofit Child Poverty Action Lab estimates nearly 34,000 apartments are needed in the city of Dallas for lower-income residents.
The state comptroller’s office stopped short of offering recommendations but nodded to potential solutions. Zoning, land-use regulations and institutional investor ownership of homes were all identified as impediments to housing affordability.
Steve Langridge, owner of builder Taft Homes, and Sriram Villupuram, a professor of real estate and finance at the University of Texas at Arlington, previously told The News that smaller lot sizes and increasing density would help lower costs for apartments and single-family homes.
Researchers with the U.S. Government Accountability Office recently found institutional investors may have contributed to increasing home prices and rents after the 2008 financial crisis. However, it’s unclear how investors affected homeownership opportunities or tenants.
Hegar’s report is among the latest calls from top state officials for lawmakers to address housing affordability in Texas. Gov. Greg Abbott said in March that the “corporate large-scale buying of residential homes” should be part of the 2025 legislative session.
“Lawmakers have taken critical steps in recent years to lower the overall cost of home ownership by reducing the property tax burden on Texans, and we are making progress as a state toward lowering artificial barriers and removing regulations that limit or inhibit home building,” Hegar said in a statement. “But this issue remains daunting and key to our continued overall economic health. My office will continue to work with legislators to provide support as they work to address this issue and prepare bills for the upcoming legislative session.”
