DFW Real Estate Summer 2026: What Buyers & Sellers Need to Know Right Now

All right, party people. This is DFW residential real estate coming at you hot from the Patrick Gleros studio. PatrickGleros.com studio. Check it out for all your lending stuff. We're talking real estate today though, and it's middle of June. And we are already pretty confident that we know what the summer is looking like and will look like. And so that's really what we're digging into today is what do you need to know what's really happening on the ground? Not the headlines, not the just loose predictions, but what does the data say? What do the trends say? Where are we relative to this time last year and previous years? And what can you do with it? Really, that I think matters just about as much as the data is why do I care what's in it for me if I was buying or selling or just trying to protect my value and keep an eye on my home? Why do I care about what's actually happening in the market? Why do I care about this data? So we'll get there. But in June, 2026, we're talking DFW real estate. Let's do a quick recap, Ian, just quickly, if you were wanting to buy or sell this summer, kind of a rapid fire, what would have to happen when in order, let's just say we're defining summer by the school districts. And so I need to be in or out whatever I'm doing by the second week of August. Sure. So second week of August, I'm going to work backwards. Yep. That's always how we do this. So second week of August, you are looking at a 30 to 45 day close, generally speaking, unless you're paying cash or something else. So let's say you therefore need to be able to split the difference. You want to be under contract on a home to close second week of August by the first of July. Okay. Right. Now, from there, you're going to be looking at depending on what you're looking for, four to six, seven weeks, maybe, in order to actually find a home, get it executed, be under contract. And if we're being honest, that's a completely undefinable number. We're saying four to six, four to seven, because typically that's how long it takes people. Some people find it in a day. And that's with our clients, what we've seen, people that we've worked with recently. But yes, we've had people, first house they've seen, it's like, this is the one we want. And others that wait two years. But if I'm going to say on average, then I'm going to say, call it six weeks, which means you want to be in the country. You know, we start looking at houses the middle of May. And then before that you need to have spoke to a lender. You might need to get pre-approved. Courtney. Duckies in a row, all that stuff. We've got a situation. Tell me. Ian's timeline here for us to comfortably be in or out of a home by school starting. It's over. We're back into early May and it is in fact, mid June. So this is not, we're not going to lean into this for the whole show. We actually talked a lot about this a couple of episodes back, so you can go check that out. But Ian, if someone calls the office this week and says, I do in fact want to be in or out of my house by the end of summer, I heard your podcast and I know that I don't have enough time to do this at all of the most comfortable intervals in the timeline, but can I still do it? What are you going to say to them? Maybe. Okay. Like the answer is generally, maybe it depends on so many factors. What would I have to do to make, we will do our best as we can to get you into a property in that timeline. We'd need to sit down. We'd have a conversation. We need to lay out a game plan. We'll need to walk you through the steps that you need to take in order to be able to get it done. We'll walk you through all the ways that our team will be able to jump in and help and make sure that we do everything possible to make that a reality. But the reality is too, it depends. Yep. It does depend and it always depends no matter when you're doing this. So to give you a few more little tiny specifics on that, you can tighten the window of time you have to shop. You can try to tighten the window between executing a contract and closing and funding. You can try to tighten the window that you choose your lender. You can try to tighten the window where you get an inspection done. All of those things create a little bit of stress, create a little bit of pressure, create a little bit of tension. Now look, we all do hard things. It can absolutely be done. But the reason we give you these timelines is to tell you this is ideal for most people in most situations. If you have all cash, we can cut down that time you need to be under contract. We don't need lender underwriting and all those things. That could be like seven days. If you're already dead set on like, I only want to live on this street and there are only two homes available and I am willing to pick the better one for me and do what it takes to own it, we could potentially condense that entire timeline down inside of three or four weeks. That's not normally recommended, but it's totally doable. So all that to say, that's what's happening with timelines when it comes to summer real estate. Now let's look back at previous years though and just say, hey, what does summer normally look like around here? Or how is this summer looking compared to past summers? So Ian, I know you dug into the data for the show and it's mid-June. The month where we have definitive data that's most recent is really April. We have some good May numbers, but sometimes this stuff will change and it'll tweak a little bit. So looking at April, 2026, what do you see? So if I'm looking, I looked at a number of different statistics. If I look at, for example, the closed price average. So this is the price that a home actually closed out, funded wire transfers and checks happened. This is the real dollars. The average price. Okay. The lowest it's been since prior to COVID. Okay. So average price per closing is lower than it's been since 2019-ish. Now I'll tell you. I've got from 2021 onwards, but if I look at 2021 onwards, I'll run really quick. Six numbers, $385,000 in 21, then $379,000, then a drop to $335,000, up to $356,000, up to $384,000. And then this past year it was $314,000. Okay. Now I want to be clear with what that does not mean, Courtney, because I know the average person listening to this podcast or watching this video might think that that means that's what's happened to property values. That's not necessarily what that is saying. Now there have been some pockets where property values did dip and go back up and dip again, but that's saying that's the amount of money people are spending on average to purchase a home. One explanation might be that people are interested in lower priced homes. People aren't spending as much as they were. It doesn't necessarily mean the same house followed that journey. That's the average of closed transactions in the market in the month of April over since 2021. Okay. So that number had a steady climb. It dipped, it popped back up and it's dipped again. Some of that has to do with affordability and mortgage rates and the overall economy and the job market and seasonal cycles and all those things. I just want to be clear, that's not the same graph as saying property values in DFW have taken that rise. That's the amount for the homes that are selling. There are some markets where the lower priced homes just sell more. And there's some markets where the higher priced homes sell more. And there's some markets where pretty much all homes sell well. And there's some markets where almost nothing sells well. We're in a really unique market where some pockets are still doing really well. Some markets are struggling and there's some in the middle. So it's actually a fairly logical market where not everything does well. But to be clear, the values have kind of climbed up, dipped down, popped up again, and they've slipped back down right now. So the number we're talking about there is the final sale price on average in April was down again. I think I said Plano. That was Allen. Because if I actually, if I look at Plano, same amount of years, this past April was right in the middle, basically. We had 402k and 396, down to 350, down to 348, 392, and this year it was 376. So just under kind of what we did last year. Yeah. Mid, upper, mid range of the last five or six years, which again is telling you- But not the worst. Yeah. You go around and look at Richardson, Aledo, Fort Worth, White Settlement. You can go up and look at Colley. I mean, each little pocket is going to have some differences. Some of it is like an employer might've moved there and they might've brought- A month by month is such a tricky number, right? I do actually have the data from May for Plano and it was the highest that we've had in the last four years. Yep. I'm glad you did that. So the point we're making here is the data is all over the place right now. But if you zoom out a little bit and instead of letting one little microscopic data point drive your optimism or pessimism or decision-making, we would say broadly what that data is telling us that is happening in Dallas, Fort Worth real estate this summer is it's actually making sense. And when I say the market in DFW this summer is making sense, that hasn't been true most summers for a while. Now, last summer felt fairly similar to this. The difference in this summer is we had a little surge of optimism early this year that kind of dissipated again. It didn't tank, but it kind of dissipated. Kind of February-ish, there was like this, okay, rates have come down. Things are looking good. People are tired of waiting. We're all going to kind of come out of the winter and do something. And then we saw the economy take a little bit of a shock with war and oil prices and all this kind of stuff. So rates rose right back up and we've seen kind of the stagnation of last summer. Now, again, when I say stagnation, that's a negative term, but really it's just an observation of the data. The amount of intensity slowed, but buyers have great opportunity right now to buy homes where they have more choices at their disposal than they have for a while. Not a crazy amount where the market's bad, but enough that you could have some choices. You could find something you really like. You have a little bit of time to sleep on it or think about it. You have a little bit of back and forth negotiability with the buyer and the seller. Everybody can either be happier, give and take a little bit. So all that being said, there's about three to six months of housing inventory in DFW right now. We normally explain housing inventory, or sometimes people will refer to that as the absorption rate, the rate at which the buyers are absorbing the homes that sellers are putting on the market. That's the rate. Meaning if no new homes hit the market, we would be out of houses for sale in three to six months. That's historically a very balanced range. We always say four to six, four to seven is kind of the stable market. Zero to three or four is a seller's market. Six or seven and beyond is a buyer's market. And the reason there's some ranges there is because different markets, different seasons that can move a little bit. All that to This summer's a fairly stable market, still leaning a little bit towards sellers as far as the advantage. We had a multiple offer situation. Actually, we had two this week in the office. This show is brought to you by the Todd Tremonti Home Selling Team, where we guarantee to sell your home over the average price and under the average time. We also guarantee to help you buy a home and save at least $5,000 throughout the purchase process. Check out over 800 five-star reviews on Google. We'll get back to the show. One on the sell side, one on the buy side. There might've been more that I just didn't hear about. But the point is that's happening on good in demand properties. It's not happening on not so great, not so in demand properties. Well, one of these properties was like a million three. Yep. And it had two in the same day. Yeah. So all this to say, the market right now is actually making sense. It's fairly stable. Now, when I say fairly stable, that's not the exact same observation for Allen as it is in Benbrook or for Wiley as it is in Walsh Ranch. Each pocket has its own personality, its own data, its own job providers, its own age range of homes and neighborhoods and maturity and things like that. But broadly speaking, DFW is in a fairly stable, approachable market right now. When we think about days on market, that can be a little bit misleading for people, but basically we're asking how long does it take for homes to sell? So when you're looking at that data, Ian, just looking back over the last, since 21 or whenever you started your dataset, what's going on with how long is it taking to sell homes? Yeah. So again, generally speaking, as high as it's been in the last five years, really across DFW, the average is 61 days in April. Compare that back in 2022, it was 34. Now there are big differences though. So if I was looking at Allen and Plano, those are in the- You want to let Courtney guess which one's lower? Well, I'm going to give you the Allen-Plano area and then I'm going to give you Aledo. Okay. Which of those two do you think homes are selling faster in, Plano-Allen or Aledo? Plano-Allen. Back to you, Carl. Correct, Courtney. Low 40s in those areas and in the Aledo area, it's upper 80s. Yep. So what does that mean? On the one hand, we don't know and not everybody knows. You can pull data and you can make assertions. You can try to make connections. And what I can tell you is that none of those numbers are scary at all. But coming out of a very long stretch of the neighborhoods, people were expecting single digits. I mean, for years, people were like, we're going to put our house on the market and we're just going to go out of town for the weekend and it'll be sold by the time we get back. We won't have to deal with all the 87 showings. We'll just leave town. Well, that is the absolute anomaly of life on earth when it comes to selling a home. This is very normal. How long is it taking to sell a house? A month or two? Yeah. 34 to 61 days. Okay. Who cares? No big deal. And that was normal for like forever. Forever and ever. I mean, I've been in real estate since 2001. I've been licensed since 2003. I've been a broker since 2005. I can just tell you that in the 2007, 8, 9-ish era, when we all call that the financial crisis, people would have begged for days on market in the double digits, right? They'd be like, anything under 100 would be freaking great. You're telling me like I can put a house on the market in summer and sell it in summer. That's amazing. I don't have to bring money to closing. So all that to say, we could read you statistic after statistic after statistic, and then we could guess at what they mean. Some of them are so direct, we really know what they mean. But here's what is happening right now. This is a healthy summer market in DFW. It is not the most energetic. It is not the most active. We're not going to break any records for most homes sold or anything, but we're not as far off of that as you would think. DFW is absolutely still growing. People are moving here. Corporate headquarters are moving here. Mortgage rates are actually still below historical averages. For the last 10 or 15 years, they feel high or at least kind of mid. But historically, they're still low. Homes are selling in very reasonable timetables, a month or two. And the pace at which they're is coming down a bit as we make our way farther into summer. Ian gave you some of the April versus May numbers. Things were picking up from April to May, as you would kind of expect they will. And then I'll tell you, after mid-July or third week of July or so, normally, we see those numbers start to come back down. Things slow down again. The peak pricing starts to back off a little bit. But basically, what's happening is we've moved fully out of the spring market and into the summer market. So here's the takeaways. If you are a buyer in this market, here's what you have going for you. You have historically favorable rates and recently decent rates. You have more homes to choose from than you have for most of the last decade. You have sellers who are more realistic and willing to negotiate back and forth than you have probably in the last decade. And you have a market that's moving at a pace that you can breathe. You could go see a home and you could sleep on it. You could have a conversation with your family. You could think about school and work and commutes and not have to just jump instantaneously. Now, if you want a home in the most desirable neighborhood in DFW, and there's not a lot of them available, and you want the nicest one and you want it at the best price, you may be up against another offer or two or three. If you're looking to find the best possible financial deal, there are some areas where prices are legitimately down over the last few years. There's not a lot of demand. Those homes are sitting on the market a little bit longer and you're not likely to have to compete with anybody else. All of that is happening. All of that is possible. All of that is present this summer. So if you're a buyer, depending on what you want and where you want it, you have more advantages right now than you've had certainly in most of the middle 2010s-ish and then definitely in the post-COVID run. But in a lot of ways, this summer feels like last summer, but people are one more year tired of waiting. We're seeing a few more people that are like, I've been wanting to move for years. I've been trapped by my rate or worried about pricing, but we're going to go ahead and do it. Now, it's not gangbusters out there, but it's a generally logical market for a buyer to navigate. It makes sense. You can figure this out. And then for sellers, if you are a seller right now, I would say if you have a marketing plan in place, which most sellers sadly don't, if you have a great agent, if you have a plan and you understand market movements and seasonality and what's in demand right now and what's moving and what's not, you can still get near or maybe even all the way to an all-time sales record. That's definitely not happening on average. Most people are not achieving that, but there is enough demand for great homes marketed well, priced well, presented well, that we're having sellers do really, really well. We are still guaranteeing to sell homes over the average price and under the average time at the Todd Germani Home Selling Team, and we're doing that all the time. But as a whole, it's taken a little bit longer for sellers. As a whole, sellers are not just naming their price and not doing anything. We are, as we always have, encouraging sellers to follow our seven-step proprietary marketing plan. But universally, sellers are having to clean up a little bit, fix a few things, present the home as well as possible because they're competing with more sellers. If you were a seller right now, I would tell you this is a good time to sell. I'd be slightly cautious of that late summer transition into fall, but I anticipate we're actually going to have an exceptional fall selling season this year. The data is telling me that summer is going to be good. Early summer, spring was actually really funky in DFW. It was like this backlash after we had a good winter and a really weird oil prices and the economy and war and stuff shocked the markets for major spending. There's been a minor recovery to just whatever we're doing it. I think the fall has statistically looks like it may be a really busy season. If you're a seller, I would say you don't have to be in a panicked rush. But because there is a little bit of renewed energy from the buy side, if I'm a seller, I want my house on the market when buyers are willing to do something. I don't want to wait around and try to time the top and lose that buyer willingness, which hasn't been around a lot. There hasn't been a whole lot of buyer optimism in the last four or five years. I wouldn't say buyers are throwing parties, but they're feeling better about their choices. They're feeling a little more flexible, a little bit more capable, a little bit more willing to deal. If I was a seller, I would want to take advantage of that. But if you're a seller and you're not quite ready, I would say you don't have to feel the pressure of sell now or you're going to lose your opportunity because I think the seller opportunity will extend pretty well into the fall. If I was a I would be in a little bit more of a hurry because if we see some economic optimism, if we see a little bit more DFW real estate positivity, you're going to see a lot more competition really fast. If rates come down at all, you're going to see a lot more competition really fast. By the way, the statistic that Ian was sharing initially, the average closed price that looked down, that number goes up immediately when rates go down. Mortgage rates go down, I can afford to buy more house with the same income because the mortgage rate is less. And so people start buying more houses. It's not that the value of the house necessarily is bouncing around. It's that people are spending what they can afford. And now all of a sudden, they can afford more because rates are allowing them to borrow more on the same income. Hopefully that makes sense. But that's what I would be doing right now if I was a buyer or a seller. No, truthfully, if I was a buyer or seller, I would be using the Tatra Money Home Selling Team. So you can find us online at tatramoneyteam.com. But if you have a trusted real estate advisor that you've known for years and years, that has a great track record of results, that guarantees the results, that has full-time agents and staff and great technology and a proven system, then I would be asking them, how do I take advantage of this market? And I would tell you as a buyer, it's because you have choices and you have time and you have relatively favorable rates and pricing that hasn't gone up as much as otherwise it would have. If I'm a seller, it's a good market because prices are solid, buyers are active, but I don't have to be in a huge hurry because the opportunity for sellers will probably be there later as well. Now, other commentary on this summer, man, we have had a lot of rain, way more than most. Now, last year, we had a pretty wet late spring and early summer too, but way more than normal. So things look good. It hasn't been quite as hot. And normally those things are favorable for the market. So once the brutal heat hits, we normally sync that up with late summer, back to school, kind of miserable to be outside and we see real estate start to dip a little bit. So if you're a buyer, that's something you could take advantage of. If you're not worried about the school schedule, you might say, hey, I want to buy when those sellers feel like they've missed the summer market. We have a great strategy for that. If you're selling and buying, I think this is an incredible time to be doing both. And our team could help you knock it out of the park, touchmoneyteam.com. Any closing arguments from the Yanni Donnie, the English wonder himself? It's very hot outside already. Okay. Solid comment. Triple C, full price Courtney, final thoughts for the folks this summer and DFW residential real estate. Go team. Go team go. Hey, let me put a quick summary on all that. It's a good market in DFW. You got to be smart. If you have a great agent, good lender inspector, if you have a good team around you, you could do really, really well selling and, or buying in DFW right now. Hey, check out all of our episodes on DFW real estate weekly with Todd Tremonti. Check out the podcast, wherever you're getting this, we'll keep them coming to you. But don't forget we're on YouTube as well with a bunch of other educational videos. We'll talk to you on the next one.