DFW's Economic Engines Roared in 2024, Poised to Repeat in 2025
Homes sales in Dallas-Fort Worth roared back near the end of 2024, a year that showcased how DFW’s robust economic engines powered through a challenging period and remain poised to perform well in 2025.
Because of its diversified economy and workforce, and lower cost of living and home prices, real estate industry analysts and economists point to DFW as a top region for growth in 2025. PricewaterhouseCoopers and the Urban Land Institute surveyed more than 2,000 real estate experts nationwide and ranked the Dallas-Fort Worth area as the best place for real estate investment in 2025.
Home prices in DFW did not jump dramatically in 2024 as in other parts of the country, partly because North Texas recorded incredible growth in prices in 2021 and 2022. Over the past two decades, Seattle has seen the greatest home appreciation rate at 198%, followed by Dallas at 158% and Charlotte at 148%.
Even so, in the latest report released before the end of the year, DFW home sales were up 15.6% in November when about 6,000 homes were sold, the largest year-to-year increase since 2021. And that follows a strong October which saw more than 13% increase from October 2023.
While fluctuating mortgage rates kept some would-be homebuyers out of the market in 2024, real estate agents reported that homes located in desirable communities and neighborhoods, and priced fairly sold quickly at or slightly above the asking price.
Throughout 2024, DFW’s top real estate developers announced plans for dozens of master-planned communities throughout North Texas, aiming to serve a growing population with homes of all types and sizes, restaurants, retail spaces, resort-style water parks, green spaces and hiking and biking trails. Several cities in Collin County, including Prosper and Celina, were among the fastest-growing communities in the country. Expect more of the same in the coming year.
While overall commercial construction starts lagged behind other parts of the country, DFW was among the leaders of apartment construction in 2024. And construction continued for several new office buildings, particularly just north of downtown Dallas, with the construction of the Goldman Sachs campus and a new tower near Kyle Warren Park to house Bank of America operations. Also, by the end of 2025, a new campus for more than 3,000 Wells Fargo employees in Las Colinas in Irving is expected to be completed.
With several thousand workers at both Charles Schwab and Fidelity in Westlake, and the planned Texas Stock Exchange in Dallas, North Texas trails only New York City with the most financial services employees in the country. And with the future opening of the Texas Stock Exchange in Dallas, the moniker for DFW as “Y’all Street” continues to solidify.
The new star on the real estate front: data centers. DFW is home to the country’s second-most data centers, the technology backbone of national and global companies with about 5 million square feet of computing space.
Over the past several years, more and more people have decided to call Texas their new home, with about 600,000 people moving to the Lone Star State in the past year. DFW is one of the biggest draws because of its diversified workforce, multiple communities ready to welcome businesses and their employees, lower cost of living, and two airports that serve as hubs for major airlines and are expected to expand operations in the coming years. With managed growth and infrastructure plans in place in various cities across the region, it’s no surprise that demographers and economists predict Dallas-Fort Worth to become the country’s third-largest metro region in the country within the next 10 years.
