Did a ‘New York Times’ Columnist Become an Influencer for the Euless Rental Market? Maybe

Let’s put 2 + 2 together here.

Recently, a New York Times columnist trumpeted Euless as the best place to move to in the whole U.S. Late last week, Zumper released data on which Dallas-area city had the largest year-over-year rent increase — yep, Euless.

Farhad Manjoo, an opinion columnist for The Times, entered his preferences in the news outlet’s interactive quiz and Euless emerged as his kind of city.

The Zumper Dallas Metro Area Report, which monthly analyzes listings across 14 metro cities to show the most and least expensive cities and cities with the fastest-growing rents, revealed that Euless rentals are going up.

Euless isn’t the most expensive ($1,140 for a one-bedroom, ranking it 10th among the reporting cities), but the city’s percentage of rental increase over a year was 25.3 percent. It was a close call, however, with Irving posting 24-percent increases and Lewisville increasing 23.8 percent. Fort Worth had the lowest rent increase at 7 percent.

Frisco had the highest rent for a one-bedroom at $1,530, which is up 21.4 percent from December 2020. Arlington has the least-expensive rent for a one-bedroom — a cool grand, which is up 11.1 percent from a year earlier.

Month-over-month, Richardson’s rent was up 5 percent with Carrollton and Frisco close behind at 4.8 percent.

As for whether the Times columnist was an influencer for Euless: The city’s home prices in December were up 16.3 percent compared to last year, according to Redfin. Also, Redfin scored Euless a 77, Very Competitive, on its how-hot scale.

So, maybe Manjoo was on to something.