Finished homes continue to sit empty in North Texas, and homebuilders have slashed housing starts by nearly 20% as demand fell in this year’s third quarter.
Dallas-based market research firm Residential Strategies Inc. reports that many builders in Dallas-Fort Worth saw a “20-30% drop in traffic and sales” as market drivers deteriorated over the summer.
Builders continue to throw incentives at buyers as inventory piles up and new lots continue to come online, said firm principal Ted Wilson.
But it isn’t enough. Builders hope conditions change soon.
The 30-year mortgage rate hit 6.3% this week — settling in at their lowest rate in about a year, according to FreddieMac. The Federal Reserve’s 25-basis-point rate cut in mid-September, along with expectations of additional easing, helped lower mortgage rates.
D-FW Real Estate News
It could bring buyers slowly back to the market.
Residential Strategies warns that if rates don’t fall further, then 2026 may be a slower year for these firms.
The data
Within for-sale communities, builders started more than 9,150 homes in the third quarter, down nearly 20% from the previous year.
The annualized start rate for the twelve-month period ending in September fell to 43,260, a more than 9% decline year-over-year.
New home closings fell to 11,045 for the three months ending in September. That’s a 6% decrease from last year. Annualized closings reached 45,733 units — a 3.6% drop.
The supply of finished vacant homes soared in the previous quarter. At the end of September, inventory hit 12,300 units, up 11.5% from the previous quarter.
That represents a 3.2 month supply — well above the 2 to 2.5-month range viewed as balanced.
Profit margins have compressed for builders in the region. Many are operating at “minimum” profits in southern submarkets as well as several of the entry-level/first move-up markets in the outer eastern and western suburbs, the report states.
Builders spent the first half of the year using a speculative construction strategy — initiating construction prior to finding a buyer. That has since changed, according to the report.
“By midyear, it became clear that sales were not materializing as quickly as anticipated,” said Cassie Gibson, executive vice president at RSI. “In response, builders adjusted their start pace to align with actual sales velocity during the third quarter.”
Over the past year, lot development has accelerated, and there are now more than 70,000 lots in the development pipeline. Residential Strategies estimates that lot inventory will expand in the coming months.
At the end of September 2025, RSI identified 105,077 vacant developed lots in D-FW — a 29.1-month supply. That’s above the 24-month equilibrium.
“North Texas has shifted from a period of lot undersupply between 2020 and 2024 to a clear state of oversupply,” said senior vice president Ned Wilson. “With demand now softening, the continued wave of lot deliveries is expected to result in a significant surplus of lots by (the end of 2026).”
A major challenge for the region’s housing market is slowing job growth and international migration.
For the twelve months ending August 2025, D-FW added only 27,300 net new jobs — a 0.6% growth rate. Residential Strategies said the D-FW metro averaged roughly 2.7% job growth from 2010 to 2024.
“Job growth is just dead,” Ted Wilson said.
In 2024, international buyers accounted for more than 60% of builder’s sales in many northern D-FW communities. This year, that figure has fallen below 30%, according to the report.
Don Dykstra, co-founder of Bloomfield Homes, initially thought his firm would cut starts in the third quarter by 50%. They didn’t go that far. The firm scaled by roughly 25%.
The firm has gotten even more aggressive with buyer incentives, offering upgraded flooring, front doors, lighting and cabinets.
“We’ve slowed starts to match the sales pace, but we’ve still got excess inventory that we’re offering great deals on,” he said.
Residential Strategies estimates roughly 42,000 homes will be started in North Texas this year, the fewest since 2019.
However, 2025 is still expected to rank in the top 10 for most home starts and closings in a year.
The firm anticipates a slower 2026 with 40,000 starts, and that number could fall further if mortgage rates don’t drop, Ted Wilson said.
“There has [to be] something to stimulate the market,” he said.