Headed to Texas: Thousands of Out-Of-State Eyes on D-FW Homes
The number of out-of-state homebuyers shopping the Dallas real estate market has more than doubled in the last year. Since the start of 2020, the Dallas area has seen one of the largest jumps in potential relocating buyers, according to a new report by real estate firm Redfin. More than 6,200 of Redfin’s digital Dallas-area property searches in January were by out-of-towners. “The most popular origins of people searching in Dallas are Los Angeles, the San Francisco Bay Area and Seattle,” a Redfin spokesperson said in an email. More than 30% of Redfin’s January traffic was by home shoppers searching in other markets.
“More homebuyers have looked to move from one metro area to another since the onset of the pandemic, with many people who are able to work remotely choosing where to live based on things like affordability, home size and proximity to family instead of commute times,” Redfin researchers said in the new report. “The increase is driven by buyers leaving pricey coastal areas like the Bay Area and Los Angeles in favor of relatively affordable places.”
Austin was the top market for home searches by out-of-towners, with almost 8,000 searches in January, according to Redfin. The largest share of its page hits came from customers in the San Francisco area. The Dallas area ranked fourth among the cities with the most out-of-state eyes on local real estate. About 34% of Redfin’s Dallas traffic was from out of the area, with most of the hits coming from Los Angeles locations.
Texas has been a top location for relocating companies — a trend that’s accelerated with the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2020, Dallas-Fort Worth real estate agents sold a record of more than 112,000 houses, almost 9% more than in 2019, according to Texas Realtors...
