Update on Dallas Housing Market Inventory in Early 2025
DFW housing market inventory has returned to pre-pandemic levels, giving home buyers more properties to choose from.
Housing market inventory in the DFW area has been tight for a few years now. And by now, we all know the reasons for this trend.
The pandemic led to a surge in home buying activity, particularly in relocation hotspots like Dallas and Austin. This reduced the supply of homes on the market, depleting inventory and challenging home buyers like never before.
Now, as we move into 2025, DFW housing market inventory has increased. Home buyers have more properties to choose from, and more negotiating leverage than in recent years.
Here's what you should know about this trend:
All major housing markets in Texas gained inventory during 2024.
DFW inventory has returned to pre-pandemic (2018 - 2019) levels.
As a result, buyers will have more properties to consider in 2025.
Buyers will also have a bit more negotiating leverage than past years.
DFW Housing Market Inventory in Early 2025
In January, Realtor.com shared the latest housing data for the nation's 100 largest metropolitan areas. The report included four Texas metros: Austin, Dallas, Houston, and San Antonio.
According to this report, the total number of active real estate listings (e.g., homes for sale) has increased over the past year, in all of Texas's major metro areas.
Here are the year-over-year increases in total listings, by metro area:
Austin-Round Rock-Georgetown: +13.0%
Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington: +31.1%
Houston-The Woodlands-Sugar Land: +24.5%
San Antonio-New Braunfels: +16.1%
Forecasts suggest that housing market inventory could increase further in 2025, especially if mortgage rates decline over the coming months.
Graph: Months of Supply Over the Past 10 Years
The following graph shows the "months of supply" for the DFW real estate market, dating back ten years. It's based on data provided by national real estate brokerage Redfin.
Two things will jump out at you from this graph:
You can see where supply levels plummeted during the pandemic years.
You can also see how market inventory has largely recovered since then.
In early 2025, most local housing markets across Texas have just as much inventory as they did before the pandemic, and some cities have even more than before.
The Austin metro area, for example, has a lot more properties for sale in early 2025 than it did from 2017 to 2021. And this has shifted the market to favor buyers for a change.
The DFW metroplex has also experienced gradual growth, as shown in the above graph. Equally noteworthy: the Dallas area currently has more supply than the national average.
Inventory Has Been Growing for a While Now
The supply growth trend explained above has been going on for some time now. For instance, a report from Texas REALTORS published back in fall 2024 stated the following:
"Months of inventory, or how long it would take the existing homes on the market to sell at the current rate of sales, was 4.8 statewide, which is an increase from 3.6 months during the same period last year. Four to five months of inventory generally indicates a market balanced between supply and demand ... Every metro area reported a rise in months of inventory."
Looking forward, some economists believe that housing market supply levels could continue to increase throughout 2025, giving home buyers an added advantage.
Here's a recent prediction issued by researchers at Realtor.com:
"Growth in inventory with single family home starts is expected to grow 13.8% [in 2025] and existing for-sale home inventory is expected to grow by 11.7%..."
Realtor.com believes that steady supply growth will create the first "balanced" real estate market we've had in nine years. This means that Dallas-area home buyers could have increased bargaining power and more property options in the months ahead.