Advocate photo of apartments in Dallas
Landlords are busy with 93.9% of the units in Dallas occupied and demanding almost $1,600 for an average apartment (hovering around $1,460 in Lake Highlands Estates, $1,288 in Merriman Park, $1,240 in White Rock North, for examples. Neighborhood break down here).
For renters, it’s a dog-eat-dog market (that’s even more competitive and pricey for actual dog owners).
In fact, Dallas renters face the fiercest competition in the state, outranking even Austin on the competitively scale by 20 points. Used by RentCafe’s real estate analysts in their first-quarter 2023 most in-demand markets report, the competitively scale is based on average vacant days (15%), occupied apartments (30%), prospective renters (15%), lease renewal rate (30%) and share of new apartments (10%).
Competition for rentals in Texas is “reasonable” compared to the national landscape, according to the folks at RentCafe.
“Even so, some Texas rental markets got hotter this year, including Dallas. The apartment market here is 26% more competitive than last year.”
Eight would-be renters compete for each vacant unit in Dallas.
Dallas rentals are snatched up in an average 37 days.
Despite a slightly lower occupancy rate than the national level, 93.9% versus 94.2%, finding a new place is more challenging than the same time last year in Dallas.
That’s also because 60.2% of renters decided to renew their leases.
Dallas saw a mere 0.5% increase in its apartment stock in the last months of 2022, which according to the researchers, is surprisingly low considering Texas’ reputation for keeping a strong apartment-building pace, as the Advocate courtesy of RentCafe documented last year.
Meanwhile, the number of new apartments in Austin, Fort Worth and Houston grew by 1.33%, 0.72% and 0.56%, respectively.
As a result, Dallas’ “rental competitivity index” jumped from 46 to 58 in one year. In contrast, San Antonio and Austin saw a slight decrease in competitiveness in the last months of 2022. The Texas rankings, No. 1-5 are: Dallas, Fort Worth, San Antonio, Austin, Houston.
Courtesy RentCafe, Yardi and Datawrapper.
At a national level, RentCafe reports that the Northeast — metros in New Jersey and Pennsylvania, for example — has some of the hottest rental markets as well as parts of Florida, including Miami-Dade County.
According to RentCafe, the better part of the country is still dealing with housing underproduction.
“The overall housing supply cannot keep up with demand,” they reported. “Apartment construction dwindled in almost all markets compared to the start of 2022.”
Dallas is definitely not NOT building apartments, as any of us who ever come out from underneath our rocks can see.
Catch up on the state off housing in Dallas and Lake Highlands here.
Note: RentCafe’s data comes from market-rate large-scale multifamily properties of at least 50 units. Fully affordable multifamily properties were excluded.
