DALLAS — Read this story and more North Texas business news from the Dallas Business Journal
Four ZIP codes in Dallas-Fort Worth have shifted from homeownership to a renter majority in the last decade, according to a new study.
More than 43.7 million U.S. households lived in rentals in 2021 — the highest number in the last 55 years, according to a new report from RentCafé.
Southwest Dallas' 75233 ZIP code in Oak Cliff was the No. 10 area on RentCafé’s list of 101 zones nationwide to transition from homeownership. The number of renters in 75233 increased by 59.8% this past decade, going from 5,481 to 8,758.
Part of the reason is the rapidly rising home prices in the area. The median single-family home value in the 75233 ZIP code rose 52% in the past three years alone, from $215,790 to $328,048, according to a separate analysis by the Dallas Business Journal.
The analysis showed soaring home price appreciation in the past decade throughout much of Oak Cliff, just across the Trinity River and southwest of downtown Dallas.
Construction of rental properties is on the rise in Oak Cliff, said Jenni Stolarski, a real estate agent for Compass who has lived and sold homes in Oak Cliff for 18 years and owns rental property in the area.
“The land cost down here was lower for a long time, and it's just now picking up, so what we're seeing a lot of construction-wise is rental,” Stolarski said. “We haven't had a lot of new rentals up until the last five years. You didn't see a lot of that being built. Now we've got a huge amount of it, which is great.”
Living in a rented apartment also overtook homeownership in the 75223 ZIP code in East Dallas, according to RentCafé’s analysis of U.S. Census data. Overlapping with the Hollywood Hills neighborhood, 75223's renter population increased by 59.2% this past decade, with the number of renters growing from 4,824 to 7,681.
Two other North Texas ZIP codes followed the same trajectory: 75252 in southeast Plano and 75228 in northeast Dallas.
The 75252 postal zone is just south of President George Bush Turnpike and east of the University of Texas at Dallas campus; 75228 is a pie-shaped area inside the Interstate 635 loop, north of I-30 and roughly south of Garland Road. The percentage of renters grew to 54.3% in 75252 and 52.5% in 75228 in the past 10 years.
Despite already having a renter-majority status 10 years ago, some Dallas-Fort Worth ZIP codes saw big growth in the number of apartment dwellers. For example, 75210, which includes Fair Park in South Dallas and the area to the southwest up to White Rock Creek, had a 94% surge in the number of renters, making it the 12th fastest-growing renter ZIP code nationwide.
As many as 101 ZIP codes in the country switched from homeowner-majority to renter-majority during the last decade, Rentcafé found. Today, there are more renters than homeowners in 41% of the ZIP codes in the nation’s 50 largest cities.
Here’s the full study.
Other RentCafé findings include:
- Downtown areas became more popular for renters in 2020 than 10 years prior.
- Of the new renter majority ZIP codes, 43240 in Columbus, Ohio, experienced the fastest increase in the number of renters.
- San Antonio’s 78215 is the nation's top trending ZIP code for renters, tripling its renter population in 10 years.
