Dallas Leads Texas in Putting Up Downtown Digs
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Dallas is leading the Lone Star State when it comes to downtown apartment construction, with 7,650 units delivered in the city center between 2020 and 2024, according to a study by RentCafe.
The online apartment search website compiled a list of the top 50 cities in the United States by downtown apartment units built during the period. Dallas came in at No. 12 overall, but it topped the list of Texas cities in the running and was ranked No. 6 in the South.
Of all the units to go up in Dallas this decade, some 31% were built in its central business district and 10.5% were adaptive reuse projects like office conversions.
Houston and Austin came in behind Dallas for downtown units logged between 2020 and 2024, clocking 7,128 and 7,054, respectively. Austin might’ve turned out more in its city center if developers weren’t focused on meeting housing demands in other parts of the city.
“Austin is sort of developing an alternative central business district in North Austin,” said Doug Ressler, manager of business intelligence for the CRE data research firm Yardi Matrix, noting that only 13% of delivered units in Austin went downtown. RentCafe used Yardi Matrix’s data for the study.
Ressler told CandysDirt.com that high population growth and its consequent housing demand have been driving the development of apartment units in Dallas as the city and others across Texas struggle with affordability issues. Multifamily developers have been stepping up to try to meet the demand.
“The new stock coming out is getting absorbed, especially in Dallas, more so than in Fort Worth,” he said.
Cowtown saw far fewer units erected in its city center during RentCafe’s study period, logging 4,607. San Antonio had a couple hundred more at 4,818. El Paso brought up the rear with only 690 units delivered downtown.
Lease the Dip?
With so many units coming online, not just in downtown areas but across Texas’ cities as a whole, pricing momentum is finally turning in favor of renters for the first time in a little while. Austin, in particular, has been seeing rents tick down for a couple of years now, but things are starting to look a little rosier in Dallas as well.
The relocation platform Relocity clocked a 1.5% decline in average rent over six months in Dallas back in April. It credited the dip to “significant supply additions, particularly in high-end properties.”
Renters in Dallas shouldn’t get too excited, though. Ressler said that there’s a pullback in starts built into the next couple of years, a gap which he expects will result in a resumption of rent increases.
“We anticipate that gap to be in the latter part of 2026,” he said. “When the current surge goes away, you’ll probably see Economics 101 play out because demand will continue to rise. But right now, it’s a consumer’s market.”
