Fort Worth is the country’s third-fastest growing city, North Texas cities are in the middle of the pack when it comes to being flip-friendly, and DFW rents rose — but not by as much as the national rate. We have all this in this week’s roundup of real estate news.

Fort Worth Country’s Third-Fastest Growing City

Fort Worth is the country’s third-fastest growing city, an analysis of U.S. Census data conducted by CityLab revealed.

Richard Florida,  co-founder and editor at large of CityLab, assembled a team of researchers to examine what cities have bounced back and are experiencing growth in population and jobs, and which ones are still struggling post-recession. The team looked at Census data between the years 2012 and 2017.

“To get at this, I worked with a team of researchers to analyze the economic performance of American’s 50 largest core or principal cities over the five-year period of 2012 to 2017,” Florida wrote. “Economist Todd Gabe crunched the numbers, using the U.S. Census’s American Community Survey to chart cities’ performance on factors including population growth, employment growth, growth in college grads, and the creative class, as well as how they stack up on economic inequality, housing affordability, and other indicators of what I call the ‘new urban crisis.'”

The team also roughly compared the 50 cities to America’s 53 large metros, excluding two because they had boundary changes that impacted their results, for a comparison group of 51.

“It is important to note that eight of the 50 largest cities do not belong to any of the 53 large metros, and also that not all of these metros have cities that number among the 50 largest,” Florida said. “Our city-to-metro comparisons are for illustrative purposes only.”

The chart above shows the 10 fastest- and slowest-growing on the metric of population.

For large metro comparisons, Dallas came in seventh for metros with 11.3 percent growth, compared to Fort Worth, who was third on the fastest growing city list with a growth rate of 12 percent.

The team also looked cities’ employed population from 2012 to 2017, and found that the fastest-growing cities are growing 10 times faster than the slowest-growing ones. Fort Worth again was the third-fastest growing in this look as well, with an employed population growth of 21.5 percent. But Arlington also made an appearance on the list — but on the bottom of it, having the fifth-slowest employed population growth at 4.2 percent.

Source: CityLab

North Texas in Middle of the Pack When It Comes To Best Places to Flip

WalletHub compared more than 170 U.S. cities, looking at 29 indicators to determine what cities and towns were most friendly to house-flipping investors.

“Our data set ranges from median purchase price to average full home remodeling costs to housing-market health index,” the company explained.

Where did North Texas fall? Well, the area isn’t the most friendly, but it’s not the absolute least, either. Plano is the first city to make an appearance on the list at number 65, followed by Fort Worth at 66. Grand Prairie was 79th, Arlington 83rd, Garland 109th, Irving 125th, and Dallas at 133rd.

Source: WalletHub

Dallas, Fort Worth Rents Rise, but Not As Much As National Rate

Nationwide, the average rent went up by 3.4 percent year-over-year, hitting $1,469 in July 2019 versus July 2018, RENTcafe revealed.

But that steady increase may be slowing. At 0.2 percent, July’s increase was the slowest month-over-month increase since February.

In Dallas, the average rent was $1,232, a $48 increase year-over-year and 0.1 percent month-over-month. Fort Worth came in at $1,119 for July, a 46 percent increase since last year, or 0.1 percent month-over-month. Arlington’s average July rent actually went down month over month, lowering by 0.2 percent to $1,024.

Source: RENTcafe