DFW Housing Market Update
Spring 2026

Where the DFW Housing Market Stands Right Now

For the first time in more than a decade, the statewide Texas median home price came in lower year-over-year. The Q1 2026 statewide median was $328,000, down 0.8% from Q1 2025 (Texas REALTORS®, released April 22, 2026). Closed sales rose 0.7% statewide over the same period, while active listings climbed 7.4%. The three previous Q1s saw active-listing increases of more than 30% year-over-year, so the supply build is finally cooling.

DFW is leading the slowdown. Closed sales across the metro fell 6.1% year-over-year in February 2026, the latest reference month from the Texas A&M Real Estate Research Center (TRERC) April 2026 Texas Housing Insight. The Dallas Fed reports DFW existing-home sales were down 6.2% year-over-year in February (Dallas Fed DFW Economic Indicators, April 29, 2026), compared to 1.6% statewide and 1.4% nationally.

Q1 2026 vs Q1 2025: Texas headline numbers

Average days on market climbed to 80 days statewide, six days longer than the same period last year. Months of inventory sits at roughly five, what TRERC analysts call a balanced market. None of this is a crash. It is a market settling back down from the 2022-2023 spike.

What Today's Mortgage Rates Mean for Affordability

The 30-year fixed-rate mortgage averaged 6.36% the week ending May 14, 2026 (Freddie Mac Primary Mortgage Market Survey). That is about 45 basis points lower than a year ago, when the same survey reported 6.81%. The 15-year fixed was 5.71%. Rates have drifted in a narrow band all spring; Freddie Mac's commentary notes purchase demand is “softening, but remains above this time last year.”

Affordability is the constraint. UTA real estate economist Sriram Villupuram describes it directly: “Affordability pressures from higher mortgage rates are a major impediment to the DFW housing market. While conditions have improved slightly, mortgage rates remain high compared with pre-2022 levels, limiting buyers' purchasing power and slowing demand” (UTA, March 6, 2026). The headline number is the rate. The practical question is what each 25-basis-point move means for your monthly payment.

A 25 basis-point drop saves about $52 per month on a $320,000 loan. A full point lower, at 5.36%, saves roughly $204 per month, or about $2,450 a year. Those numbers move the qualifying-income math more than they move the home-price ceiling, which is why buyers waiting for a 5% handle on the rate are often the same buyers who later wish they had locked at 6.36% while prices were still negotiable.

Is DFW a Buyer's or Seller's Market in 2026?

The DFW metro is a buyer's market by Redfin's definition. In April 2026, Dallas had an estimated 95.9% more sellers than buyers (16,150 buyers, 31,643 sellers). Fort Worth had 64.9% more sellers than buyers (7,990 vs 13,179). Redfin classifies any market with 10% more sellers than buyers as a buyer's market. Dallas is among the most lopsided buyer's markets in the country.

Two things matter about that number. First, the gap is shrinking. Redfin senior economist Asad Khan: “Homebuyer demand has been dwindling for months, but finally ticked up in April thanks to a strengthening job market and declining recession risk. More house hunters entering the market helped narrow the gap between the number of buyers and sellers” (Redfin, May 12, 2026). Second, the metro headline does not match every neighborhood inside it.

South DFW vs the metro headline

Sources: TRERC Mansfield LMA, TRERC Tarrant + Ellis County housing activity, Redfin.

Mansfield is still the seller side of the spectrum at 3.10 months of supply. Ellis County is closer to balance at 4.42. The metro-wide buyer-seller gap is real, but it is concentrated in the urban core and the suburbs where new construction has been heaviest. The South DFW cities Modern Feather covers do not look like one number. They look like three different numbers.

South DFW Spotlights: Mansfield, Midlothian, Waxahachie

Three South DFW cities, three different stories. Mansfield is still tight; Midlothian is holding price better than Mansfield or Waxahachie; Waxahachie is the value play. Each spotlight pulls city-level data from the best available source: TRERC's Mansfield Local Market Area for Mansfield, and Zillow's Home Value Index with TRERC Ellis County context for Midlothian and Waxahachie (TRERC does not publish a city-level LMA for those two; full disclosure in the methodology section).

What's Actually Driving the Spring 2026 Market

The DFW slowdown is not happening because the local economy is breaking. It is happening because mortgage rates are higher than buyers want them to be, and supply has finally caught up after three years of explosive growth in active listings.

The Dallas Fed's DFW Economic Indicators report from April 29, 2026 shows the labor side is still strong: unemployment 3.9% in February (below Texas at 4.3% and the US at 4.3%), average hourly earnings $37.28 (up 2.6% year-over-year and above the Texas figure of $35.00), job growth 1.6% annualized over the three months ending in February. Jobs are here. Wages are higher than the state average. The friction is on the housing side, not the economy side.

Three forces shaping spring 2026

Layered on top of those is a piece TRERC named directly in its April 2026 Insight: geopolitics. Yanling Mayer wrote that “the economic impact from geopolitical instability is reshaping the trajectory of the spring housing market” (TRERC, April 30, 2026). The practical version of that observation: when uncertainty rises, buyers wait at the start of the season and sellers still try to price for the spring lift. The two sides do not meet, and days on market go up.

What Economists and Texas A&M Are Saying

Four primary sources are tracking the same shift from different angles. Their wording matters because it tells you what to plan around.

“The economic impact from geopolitical instability is reshaping the trajectory of the spring housing market. Before the recent geopolitical conflicts and escalations, expectations were building for a more active and balanced housing market this spring.”

— Yanling Mayer, Texas A&M Real Estate Research Center, Texas Housing Insight, April 2026

“In the early 2020s, we went from steady price appreciation statewide to something more dramatic. And there was an outsized effect in the largest metros. But the changes were never uniform. The real estate market can look very different depending on the city or even the neighborhood you're standing in.”

— Jennifer Wauhob, 2026 Chairman, Texas REALTORS® Q1 2026 release

The UTA forecast adds a price-trajectory call to the same picture. Sriram Villupuram pinned it to specific drivers and a specific window.

“The DFW housing market is transitioning from a frenzied seller's market to a more balanced — but slower — environment. Home values fell around 5% in 2025, with broad softening across most counties. Looking ahead, prices will likely remain flat or decline slightly through mid-2026 due to high interest rates and slower economic growth.”

— Sriram Villupuram, Associate Professor of Finance and Real Estate, University of Texas at Arlington, March 6, 2026

What to Expect Heading into Summer 2026

Three things are likely to define the South DFW market through the back half of spring and into summer.

1. Prices stay flat or drift down a little. The UTA forecast above is the cleanest version of this: prices will likely remain flat or decline slightly through mid-2026. Texas A&M's price index is in its ninth consecutive month of small year-over-year declines (TRERC April 2026 Insight), and the pace has held steady in the 0.6-0.7% range. That is a soft landing, not a collapse.

2. Days on market stay elevated. The Texas average is 80 days for Q1 2026, six days longer than the same quarter last year. The April Insight notes February statewide DOM hit 82 days, the first time since February 2013 the figure crossed 80. Sellers who price for 2022 will sit. Sellers who price to where buyers actually are will move.

3. Buyers gain real negotiation room. Median seller price cuts are running $16,900 or 4.9% off list, up from $14,900 (4.2%) a year ago. Concessions on rate buy-downs and closing-cost assistance are showing up routinely on the offers Silvia is reviewing. The buy-side leverage is real, but it is not unlimited. It is concentrated on the homes that have been sitting longer than the local average.

There is no inventory explosion coming. Active listings statewide are up 7.4% year-over-year. That is meaningful, but a fraction of the 30%+ year-over-year jumps the three previous Q1s saw. The supply build is finally slowing.

If You're Selling vs If You're Buying This Spring

The market is bifurcated, but the playbook is the same for both sides: trust the numbers in front of you, not the headlines about national real estate. Mansfield is not Dallas. Ellis County is not Tarrant. A trained agent who pulls the right comps for the right county is the difference between a smooth close and a 90-day grind.

Methodology + Sources

Every number on this page traces to a published primary source. Sources used are listed below.

Sources used

• Texas A&M University Real Estate Research Center (TRERC) (statewide and city-level housing activity). Texas Housing Insight April 2026, Mansfield LMA, and TRERC Ellis County + Tarrant County housing activity data.
• Texas REALTORS® Q1 2026 Quarterly Housing Report (statewide Q1 totals). Released April 22, 2026.
• Freddie Mac Primary Mortgage Market Survey (30-year fixed mortgage rate). Week ending May 14, 2026.
• Redfin News, Buyers vs Sellers (April 2026) (metro-level buyer-seller imbalance). Published May 12, 2026.
• Zillow Home Value Index (ZHVI) (city-level median home value for Midlothian and Waxahachie). All-homes mid-tier smoothed seasonally-adjusted index, as of March 31, 2026.
• Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas (DFW economic indicators: jobs, unemployment, wages, existing-home sales). April 29, 2026 issue.
• University of Texas at Arlington (expert quote from Sriram Villupuram, Associate Professor of Finance and Real Estate). UTA News, March 6, 2026.

Per-city sourcing note

Mansfield: City-level statistics come from the TRERC Mansfield Local Market Area report. County context: TRERC Tarrant County housing activity. The LMA dataset does not publish days-on-market, so DOM references throughout this article are statewide figures from Texas REALTORS® and the TRERC Texas Housing Insight.

Midlothian and Waxahachie: TRERC does not publish a city-level Local Market Area report for either city (verified live against the TRERC LMA index on 2026-05-14: both city URLs return HTTP 404). City-level statistics come from the Zillow Home Value Index as of March 31, 2026 (all-homes mid-tier, smoothed and seasonally adjusted). County-level context for both cities comes from TRERC Ellis County housing activity. Different measures and different methodologies. The per-city stat cards label which source they pull from.

Frequently Asked Questions