As apartment construction booms in Texas’ big cities, Fort Worth goes in another direction

Jess Hardin
Amanda McCoy/amccoy@star-telegram.com

The city of Fort Worth says it promotes diverse housing options, including apartment buildings. But that’s not the future that developers are building in the city that had the nation’s largest population increase in 2022.

More single-family homes are being built in Fort Worth than any big city in Texas, according to building permit data from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

In 2022, more than 7,400 building permits for single family homes were filed in Fort Worth. That’s more than Dallas, San Antonio, Austin and Houston — all of which have higher populations than Fort Worth.

Here are the numbers:

  • Fort Worth: 7,421 single family units

  • Houston: 6,800

  • San Antonio: 4,686

  • Austin: 3,344

  • Dallas: 2,349

When it comes to permits for multifamily units, Fort Worth lags behind fellow Texas metros.

  • Fort Worth: 4,557 multifamily units

  • Dallas: 7,880

  • Houston: 8,945

  • San Antonio: 9,496

  • Austin: 15,102

“The only thing I can come up with is, it’s a local market phenomenon,” said Jim Gaines, a research economist at the Texas Real Estate Research Center.

Of the five counties containing Texas’ largest cities, Tarrant had the highest home ownership rate in 2021 at nearly 64%, according to data from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. That’s a more than 3% drop from 2009. Only Travis County experienced a net increase in home ownership between 2009 and 2021: from 58% to 59%.

The city of Fort Worth pointed to the amount of undeveloped land in Fort Worth for the high number of single-family permits. The city added 19,170 residents in 2022, more than any other in the United States, according to the Census Bureau.

Whereas a landlocked city like Dallas has to build by filling in developed land or going vertical, Fort Worth is still growing out, said DJ Harrell, the city’s director of development services.

City council member Carlos Flores echoed this. He also noted that single family permits likely also capture “built to rent” products, which have proliferated in DFW in the last few years. But, when it comes to affordability, built to rent communities are typically more expensive than traditional rental products.

Home ownership is out of reach for families earning the city’s median income in all but a few Fort Worth neighborhoods.

Scarcity of rental units raises the price of centrally located apartments, pushing out renters in search of affordable spots. That can exacerbate issues of traffic congestion, Gaines explained.

But given the city’s explosive growth, new building of any kind is sorely needed.

In July 2023, Fort Worth’s had 2.2 months of housing inventory. While that’s an improvement from the ruthless seller’s market that characterized the height of the pandemic, it’s still a long way from a balanced market, which is six months, according to the Texas Real Estate Research center.

What is Fort Worth planning for?

Harrell is confident that the market will provide what Fort Worth needs when it comes to housing options.

The city doesn’t control what gets built, but it does make decisions about zoning changes and can offer incentives to promote multifamily development. For example, the city can waive impact fees and development fees, said Harrell.

While the city seeks to encourage multifamily development, its comprehensive plan does not reflect planning for more of these products.

In the city’s 2023 comprehensive plan, existing land use shows 3.2% of the city is zoned for multifamily structures. In the plan’s map of future land use, only 2.4% would be zoned for multifamily.

In response to these numbers, Harrell noted the city is overhauling the comprehensive plan this year.

When asked if the new comprehensive plan will have an increase in land zoned for multifamily development, Harrell said he didn’t know. But he predicts that it will “because that’s what we promote,” he said.

He added: “We recognize that we get a great deal of single family when we know we want duplexes, triplexes, townhomes. We want even higher density, multifamily, condos. We know we want these different housing choices. And so there’s not a reason why we would not pay attention to that in our comp plan.”

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