The Dallas-Fort Worth metro now claims Texas’ crown for most expensive housing prices statewide, a fact that is causing an increasing number of North Texans to miss payments on their rent or mortgage, putting them at risk for eviction or foreclosure.
According to a new study by Mortgage Calculator, one-third of all American households are now cost-burdened, meaning that more than 30% of household income is spent on housing-related costs. Renters carry the brunt of this burden, which is exacerbated in low-income families, 70% of whom are spending at least half their earnings on rent or home payments.
Those financial arrangements leave many American families at risk of missing a rent or mortgage payment, and the Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington area is averaging the worst out of the nation’s 15 largest metropolitan areas for likelihood for home loss, Mortgage Calculator found.
By averaging the percentage of households behind on rent or mortgage payments, the study found that 39% of families in the Dallas area were at risk of eviction or foreclosure between January and September of 2024. The Houston area was the second most at-risk metro, with 35.2% of households missing housing payments and facing foreclosure or eviction.
Over 34% of households across the Lone Star State are at risk, slightly higher than the nearly 31% national average.
The state with the highest percentage of households at risk is Idaho, at 38.6% — better than DFW by tenths of a percentage point — and the most affordable state was Utah, with just under 20% of households missing housing payments in 2024.
The report cites a city-funded study presented to the Dallas City Council last year, which found a “dramatic decrease” in affordable housing across the city. Dallas currently has 100,000 fewer rental units priced at $1,000 or less than it did in 2017, and there are 40,000 homes missing for households making $55,000 per year or less.
While inflation could account for some of the gap in housing options, incomes have not kept up with the raises in pricing, city staff told the council.
The summer months are especially dire for North Texans, Mortgage Calculator found. In the May 28-June 24 window in 2024, 48% of households were at risk of losing their housing. That number skyrocketed to 61% between July 23 and August 19, the highest number of at-risk households recorded in any month across all 15 metros surveyed.
While Mortgage Calculator points to research centering on Dallas to explain our housing costs, part of DFW’s soaring numbers could be attributable to Dallas’ western neighbor. Last year, Fort Worth city staff found that the number of evictions doubled between 2021 and 2022; as of 2023, Funky Town was out-evicting Dallas and Austin despite having a smaller population.
“About 75% of our population reports that they have had an eviction within the last 12 months," Lauren King, Tarrant County Homeless Coalition executive director, told Fort Worth officials last year. "We often see that once people get evicted, they bounce around for quite a while and then once they run out of support, they usually will end up with us.”
