Texas must build hundreds of thousands of new homes to meet rising demand and contain housing costs, warns a study by Texas Comptroller Glenn Hegar’s office.
Released Tuesday, the study found that Texas has had its highest number of private housing unit construction permits since 2008.
But construction has not kept pace with population growth, especially in the state’s urban areas.
Texas needed 306,000 more homes by 2023, according to one estimate cited in the study.
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An insufficient supply of housing for middle- and low-income people is the main cause of the affordability problem, says the state Comptroller’s Office.
According to the study, the median home price in Texas rose 40% between 2019 and 2023.
Additionally, Dallas-Fort Worth endured stronger pressure from population growth and housing demand than other large urban areas in Texas.
The price increase in Dallas-Fort Worth between 2020 and 2023 was even higher, at approximately 50%.
In January 2020, the median home price in Dallas-Fort Worth was just over $267,000. Today, it’s over $400,000.
From 2020 to 2023, the region outperformed all metropolitan areas in the country in population growth and net internal migration.
Dallas-Fort Worth surpassed the 8 million population mark last year.
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Recently The Dallas Morning News spoke with a North Texas developer, a prospective homebuyer, a finance and real estate professor, several housing research firms and two Dallas city officials to better understand the region’s residential market.
The News found that:
- Dallas-Fort Worth has been one of the nation’s leaders in building apartments and single-family homes. But it’s not building enough of them.
- More than 367,000 homes and 181,000 apartments have been built in the past decade, but by one estimate, Dallas-Fort Worth is still short nearly 50,000 units.
The shortage is suffered especially by the poorest in the region.
The Dallas-based nonprofit Child Poverty Action Lab estimates that nearly 34,000 apartments are needed for low-income residents in the city of Dallas.
The state comptroller’s office refrained from making any recommendations, but did allude to possible solutions.
Zoning, land use regulations, and institutional investor ownership of housing were cited as impediments to affordability.
Steve Langridge, owner of the construction company Taft Homes, and Sriram Villupuram, a professor of finance and real estate at the University of Texas at Arlington, previously told The News that reducing lot sizes and increasing density would help lower the cost of apartments and single-family homes.
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Researchers at the Government Accountability Office have concluded that institutional investors may have contributed to higher home and rent prices following the 2008 financial crisis.
However, it is unclear how investors affected the opportunities to own or rent a home.
Hegar’s report is one of the latest calls by state officials for lawmakers to address the problem of housing affordability in Texas.
In March, Gov. Greg Abbott said “large-scale residential home purchases by big corporations” should be part of the 2025 legislative session.
“In recent years, lawmakers have taken critical steps to reduce the overall cost of homeownership by easing the property tax burden on Texans, and as a state we have made progress in reducing artificial barriers and removing regulations that limit or inhibit homebuilding,” Hegar said in a statement.
“But this issue remains daunting and critical to our overall economic health. My office will continue to work with lawmakers to provide support as they work on this issue and prepare bills for the upcoming legislative session.”
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