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The English language is tricky, isn’t it? What is “several,” for example? How about “a few?”
Let’s get more serious, shall we? What is “cheap” and what is “expensive?” Ask five people what a simple word such as “affordable” means, and you’re likely to get six answers.
That’s the energy we’re sensing when it comes to a new report that says the Dallas area is the seventh-most affordable metro in the U.S. for buying a home. It seems as though we’re regularly hit with headlines telling us that living in Dallas isn’t terribly affordable, thanks in large part to what many experts and even city council members have described as an affordable housing crisis in recent years.
Can a city in the midst of such a crisis be an affordable leader? That depends on how we define affordable.
For the sake of the survey conducted by real estate data company Clever, affordable is more or less a ranking of prices from lowest to highest, regardless of whether or not those prices fall into any sort of technical definition of affordable housing. The median home price in North Texas is lower than it is in Atlanta, according to Clever, so therefore, Dallas is more affordable than Atlanta. Simple.
According to Clever, Dallas has a median home price of $366,600 and a median household income of $92,733, resulting in a price-to-income ratio of 3.95.
“Dallas and Atlanta stand out as Sun Belt metros that remain relatively affordable despite rapid population growth,” the report reads. “Both benefit from fewer land-use restrictions and ample room to build, which has helped housing supply keep pace with demand, at least for now.”
That math gives Big D a lofty spot on this list, but there’s more below the surface. In a press release for the survey, Clever notes that “Although Dallas ranks in the top 10 for most affordable cities for housing, none of the 50 most populous metros have a home-price-to-income ratio at or below the recommended 2.6.”
To be fair to Clever, the headline of its survey article is “Home Price Growth Outpaces Income in All Major U.S. Metros,” which conveys the main takeaway when it comes to people hoping to buy a house in or near Dallas.
The key finding of the report is noted just below the headline, reading “Since 1980, home prices have risen 551% while household incomes have grown just 373%. If incomes had kept pace with home prices, the median American household would earn $115,224 today. Instead, the actual median is $83,730, a gap of $31,494.”
That is more in line with reality, not the misleading subject line of the email we received for the study proclaiming “Dallas is one of the most affordable cities for buying a home”
‘Skyrocketing Home Price Trends’
Earlier this week, the Dallas Morning News reported that “skyrocketing home price trends have changed the reality of affordable housing” in North Texas. While the Clever survey highlights the action of the past few, post-COVID years, the Morning News effort points to the 2008 financial crisis as a time when the “current crisis in housing affordability took root” as fewer homes were being built nationwide, leading to an increase in asking prices, especially as they compared to household incomes.
The Clever survey and the Morning News report focused on home buying, but affordable housing overall, including apartment rentals, has reached the crisis stage according to some Dallas city council members. Earlier this month, we reported from a council meeting where a new plan to address affordable housing was rolled out.
Over a nearly four-hour period, council members were briefed on the state of housing in the city and a new plan called Dallas is Home designed to encourage housing accessibility. Dallas residents — especially renters — are being squeezed by economic pressures and housing costs as wages remain stagnant, with a February report from the Child Poverty Action Lab finding that half of all renters in the city spent more than 30% of their gross income on housing in 2023.
Home prices have also outpaced wage growth. Dallas residents are renting in historically high numbers, including higher-end-households. That’s a sign of declining homeownership, Cullum Clark, director of the Bush Institute’s Southern Methodist University Economic Growth Initiative, told council members.
In that meeting, City Manager Kimberly Bizor Tolbert said that the Dallas is Home plan will utilize some of “the best practices of previous policies while pursuing a multi-pronged approach” to address not only development and affordable housing, but homelessness as well.
The basic idea that a home in Dallas might be a tad cheaper or have a slightly lower price-to-income ratio than it does in Atlanta simply doesn’t mean it’s affordable. Council member Chad West would’ve likely scoffed at the way in which Clever called Dallas one of the most affordable cities.
“We have a housing crisis in Dallas that we need to take seriously,” West said during the April Dallas is Home plan discussion. “I’ve been trying to sound the alarm with some of you guys for years now, and I feel like today you’ve really brought it to us.”
