Why Are So Many People Moving to the EDGE of DFW? (And Why Some Are Moving Back)

We got remote work, we've got homeschooling, we've got side gigs and businesses and privacy. Why is it that there's such demand for the edges of the Metroplex? The outer lying areas, the outer ring, as some would call it, we're calling it the edges of the Dallas Fort worth Metroplex, and that's what we're diving into today on the show. There is a lot of demand for the edges of the Metroplex, but there's also at times a bit of a reverse trend of people fleeing the edges of the Metroplex. So we're going to get into that as we make our way through the show today. And, uh, this is what we do. We help people buy and sell homes all over DFW. We've been doing it for over 20 years, but not everybody likes the same things. And I'll tell you what, we've got three in the studio today and there's not a tremendous amount of agreement here. There is some, we like, we value a lot of the same things, but we do like to disagree though. We also thoroughly enjoy, uh, a mild disagreement. Um, uh, you know, as an Enneagram eight, one of the, uh, which is the challenger, one of the, uh, definitions or the descriptors of the eight is enjoys a verbal skirmish just for fun. Boy, do I know it. And I don't know where that came from. Oh, no. Is your dad? No, no. He just came by it naturally. My mother's an eight, so I know this to be true. They love a skirmish verbal skirmish, right? Like I said, yeah, a skirmish, uh, not a show about Enneagram, but I'm a seven wing eight. So there's some overlap there. Um, no doubt about it. No doubt about, but you enjoy some melancholy music from time to time, which is who doesn't want to be in their fields and a rots my soul. It's that the individualist tracks, no, whatever they label it, the right label is just feel all your feelings. I say I'm a really fun for, okay. So here's what we are actually talking about today is the edges of the Metroplex. And so when I say edge of the Metroplex, I'm thinking names of communities, cities, towns, school districts, whatever. I'm going to point at you for those on the YouTubes. You can see this for those of you on the pot only, uh, trust me, there will be pointing and there will be responses. Okay. So are you ready? When I point to you, I just want to hear words, just the names of cities, communities, school districts, areas that when I say the edge of the Metroplex, this is what comes to mind. Anna prosper, rock wall, 40 Lido Salina. That feels Spenbrook, uh, Louisville. Seattle. I don't feel like Louisville is the edge, but I, I, I see where you're trying to go with that. The colony, Louisville, Denton, North middle North, slight Northwest Dallas, Northeast Fort Worth. The Soto. Yeah. The South is harder to determine because you got to start choosing smaller cities to the North. We have these much, much larger. DeSoto is a good size. You've got Cedar hill. Like, yeah. Like when do you leave DFW? Well, so that's, that's part of where I wanted to go. So we're there. Um, it's not a perfectly proportionate round circle radius, right? There's way more growth on the Dallas side to the North. Not nearly as much. There's growth to the South, but not nearly as much as all the cities you guys just said. There's pretty good expansion to the East of Dallas, but I would say at the moment, there's like more to the West of Fort Worth, um, like Nevada to the East Nevada, Josephine, you can get all the way out there, but those are growing slow and steady. Whereas to the West of Fort Worth, Walsh ranch, Alito, Benbrook, all the way out to mineral wells, you got, you got significant Roy city. Is that too far city is, is if it's, it's like a second edge, it's like a second outer ring. There's a gap between maybe even Wiley to Roy city and then Greenville and all that and beyond. But so just for those of you tuning in, if you're from out of the area, none of that might make sense to you, but if you were just to like look up a map, Google map, Apple maps, whatever you're into, and you were to place a pin on DFW airport and you were to zoom out like a hundred miles, everything we just said would fit inside of that circle, right? Everything we just said would fit in the like hour to DFW drive ish, not at morning drive or evening drive. Some of those could be 90 minutes, but generally speaking, we're talking about the edge of that 45 minutes to an hour. Out. Do we think the wax is DFW? Or were we saying you want to go all the way South to Waxahachie, which we call Passamaquoddy in my family. And if you get the peach dragon reference, two points for you, it feels too far, it's too far because there's big gaps. So basically what we're saying is the edge of where, if I was at DFW airport and I drove to your community, it's pretty much consistent city town development. I'm seeing houses. I'm seeing buildings. I'm seeing McDonald's and Starbucks all the way out to you. So for example, Farmersville to the Northeast is, is a little bit past the edge. Princeton is more of the edge next to McKinney or Nevada is the edge next to Wiley. And then there's a gap between those before you get out to Farmersville. Now that gap will not be there much longer. A lot of that land is already being developed. There's neighborhoods in progress. There's land being cleared and things like that. The same thing is true for Alito. It's a little bit beyond the edge of West Fort worth, um, even Benbrook, but there's not much of a gap left. Okay. So that's defining what we mean when we say the edges of the Metroplex. Okay. Now, let me ask a question. Why do people want to be on the edges of the Metroplex when we're talking to people where people are commenting on videos or chatting on social media or they're calling the office or talking to our agents, what is it that is drawing people out to the edges later? We'll talk about why maybe some people want to leave the edges, but for now, why do people want to go live, work, play on the edges of the DFW Metroplex? What are some of the jobs? No. Well, hold on, I've got a fun little thing because I decided that I wanted to know, because I think McKinney, and then you said from the airport, so I decided to look up McKinney from the airport and Waxahachie from the airport. Oh, this is nuts. I know where you're going. It's an eight minute difference. And yet it's eight minutes further to Waxahachie than that right now. Yeah. Right now. Okay. So we're recording this mid morning. And so we're in between like the height of morning drive. It's 37 minutes from the airport to McKinney and 46 minutes from the airport to Waxahachie. Yeah. The difference is just not, but it feels so different. Back to you, Courtney, because Waxahachie is not as connected and McKinney's connected the whole way. Yeah. I apologize, Courtney. It's fine. That was a great point. Thank you. I don't think it is. Okay. I just didn't want you to beat me to my point, which is I just wanted them to be a gentleman that I think y'all focus on lifestyle a lot and like the appeal of why people would want to be out. It's what we do here at the top. I actually think that people are just in awe and drawn to how much house they can get for the price. I don't know if you're saying something different in the second thing than the first thing, but certainly a bigger house is a big lifestyle impact. And I do think you're right. One of the big draws is I can get a lot more house or land or the budget. I can get a bigger lot or I can get more bedrooms or I can get the second story or third car garage or a garage at all, um, or a house at all, uh, for my budget. Right now. Certainly that's true at the entry level. We see a lot of people that are willing to live 15 or 20 minutes farther out because they can literally get a house versus they can't get a house for their budget. They, you know, maybe they wanted to be in Plano, but they're willing to live in, um, Nevada because for their budget, they can get into a house where they couldn't in Plano, or they wanted to be in, you know, West Fort Worth, but they ended up in Benbrook or they wanted to be in Walsh ranch, but they ended up all the way out in mineral wells, which used to be all the way out. And now is like, just, just down the road because it's way more connected. Okay. Some of the other reasons we're seeing it is some people will say things to us when they're looking for house. Like we just want a little bit slower pace of life. And that's like a TV film romanticism of a smaller town that I would say really comes down to family values and priorities because you could have a slower pace of life in a condo in downtown Dallas. It's less likely, but I know a lot of people that move out to the country and don't have a slower pace of life. And I know a lot of people that choose in a suburb to have a slower pace of life. I just don't think of anywhere in DFW as being that. Well, let me give you an example. Somebody might say, Hey, we've been living in Richardson forever, or we've been living in Carrollton or whatever, but we are going to move out to pick your edge, right? We're going to move out to a saline. Okay. It's like, there's not as much traffic. There's not as many big office towers. There's not as many people. So literally like I can drive from my house to the school and two minutes instead of my old drive was 18 minutes. Okay. Things about that equate to slower pace of life, right? I'm not sitting in traffic as much. There's not as much of a line at the post office. There's also not a coffee shop on every corner and not 12 grocery stores and not a water park and a professional sports team around the corner. So I do think that exists, but the point I also think you're making is if you live within an hour of Dallas Fort worth, everything you want is still at your disposal. It's still a busy, loud, lots of stuff going on, but I can tell you that my backyard feels more remote and peaceful where I live now out on what used to be the edge than it did when I lived in like islands. But then you step outside and there's like, Oh, it's a massive grocery store. Right. But you can't, my point is where I am, it's less of that than I guess in my mind when, when you, when I hear what you're saying, I think of we'll, uh, we will drive to Colorado every couple of years and go on a vacation. And when you get through like Amarillo before we enter into New Mexico, there's like these teeny tiny little like towns, I guess. And I think that's what I think of when I'm hearing somebody say slower pace of life, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I'm like, there's nothing here. I just don't think of that as DFW. Yeah, no, no. Clearly there are extremes, but the point is why do people move out to the edge? This is one of the things people tell us. And, and I do think they can achieve it. Now they're not going to get like rural New Mexico slow. That's not what they want. They want the job in the schools of DFW, but they potentially want to be at a stoplight a little bit less and in a line less often. And they're willing to say we're going to have a slightly fewer options of things. And so maybe they get that in Josephine or maybe they get that in, um, not so much prosper anymore, but I was about to say, so Sherman now where there's all these people that were Sherman, I mean, you in Oklahoma basically, but it's, but it's pretty much connected now. No, I know. But it's connected. How, I mean, how often are we talking to people now though? Where they're like, man, I moved out here for this reason. And I don't, I don't have that anymore. Like it's, it's got too built up and you look at places like Anna and it's like a little elm and it's just so many houses for sale. Okay. Let's pause for just a second and recap here. 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. Okay. So the reason people often are moving out to the edge is a Metroplex newer homes, more house for your money, larger lots, newer school districts, a little bit less traffic, slower pays, things like that. Okay. Now you're bringing up a point. There are also reasons that people either are out there and they don't want to live there anymore, or they moved out there and now they either a regret it or they're ready to move back in. Right. So what are some of the reasons you hear from some of our clients? Uh, that they're moving back in from the edges of the Metro moving back to like the Dallas area, just further in off the edge convenience. Yeah. Um, easier access to a quicker access to maybe it's like sports and things like that because the family are now, you know, kids are older or whatever. Um, you know, more job opportunities, things like that. I mean, yeah. Um, one of the things like Princeton has been a good example of this Northeast of the Dallas area, East of McKinney, but, but still connected. Um, is like, they've had to literally stop development because it grew so fast. Um, and the infrastructure was an issue. Like people moved out there and thought it's going to grow up fast and we're going to have all these restaurants and movie theaters and stuff. But then they didn't have like the first responder like crew. Yeah. It's like the houses grew and then everything around it didn't as fast. Right. Yeah. You know? And so we've had some clients that were like, we moved out here cause we could get a house for under 300,000. We're driving for everything. Well, Prosper to me is an example of. You're talking about Prosper or Princeton. I'm talking about Prosper. Okay. Go ahead. Cause I was talking about Princeton. Just want to clear up. People, a lot of people have moved to Prosper. We've got family in Prosper, but, and when I think of it, I'm like, Oh, it's not that far, but it takes 40 minutes from Plano to Prosper because the route, the it's backstreets basically because the infrastructure hasn't been built to connect all these places. Super. Well, again, positive, a little bit slower, less traffic, negative, a little bit less and there's tons of stuff being built about that. Yeah. Okay. So anyway, we've seen some people that moved out there for the reasons that we were talking about. People want to go out there. And then we see some people kind of boomerang back because the rate of progress wasn't quite what they wanted, or they realized the trade-off wasn't quite worth it. And they missed the convenience of things or access to job proximity to job. I would say things like that. Now, one of the big takeaways that people have is it's not always cheaper to move out to the edge. Right. Um, so depending on which Prosper is a really good example for a while, Prosper was like the edge of the North side. It was like, there was Frisco and then a little Prosper. Now Prosper is Frisco 2.0. It's basically no cheaper than, than Frisco is. So a couple of things that kind of stand out right now, um, is that there are a little bit slower markets, meaning it takes a little longer to sell a house. Um, homes might sell for a little bit less sometimes in certain ones of these cities, uh, but they do take a little bit longer. So like Anna, for example, is about 56 days on the market right now. 40 is about 51. Saline is about 60. Little Elm, a little bit lower, 41. As you make your way a little closer back in 35 Prosper, which we were just talking about 50 days. Now the prices are very different in these areas. Anna three 50, 43, 27 Salina, 540,000 Little Elm, three 94, Princeton, three 10 Prosper, eight 40. Okay. So not all these edge communities are cheaper. Not all of them are slower, but even when we talk about the edge, there's a big variety. Well, and this kind of backs up my point I made a little bit earlier about there being so many houses on the market because in places like Anna and Little Elm, they built so many new builds so fast. And now everybody's like, ah, this isn't what I was expecting it to be. And so they're going to be on the market longer because there's so many options for people to go buy. And some of that was cyclical, right? Like there was a big demand to move out there. And so there was a lot of development. And then the market shifted, rates went up, economy shifted. And so it's not necessarily all supply and demand driven, but because the supply is there, the demand is still good. There's just a lot of supply. And so it's taken longer and that's different than some of the interior cities, especially on the East side, like Plano's 22 days on the market. Allen's 29. Dallas is 32, which is a difficult average because Dallas is so big. Richardson's 22 Irving, 18 Lewisville, 23. And then those prices are about the same, but really every one of those on average is lower than Prosper Plano at five 20 Allen at four 93 Dallas, four 35 Richardson, four 80 Irving, three 60 Lewisville for 18. So if that was just a whole bunch of numbers real fast to you, what we're saying is there's a lot of reasons people do and don't want to live out on these edges. Generally, they are more affordable, but they're a little bit slower to buy slower to sell markets. But some of them are no cheaper at all. What Prosper is a good example of that. Alito is a good example of that. Um, Walsh ranch is an excellent example of like a development that that's true for, um, where prices are pretty strong and demand's pretty good. Uh, Frisco and McKinney, uh, are used to be the edges and now they're sort of transitions because there's communities beyond them. Same is true for Benbrook. Benbrook really used to be like the West edge. And now you have a lot to the South, uh, including like Burleson and other communities and a lot out to the West, like, um, Alito and as far out as mineral wells. Now to the South, this is a little bit tougher to navigate. There's not as many large, newer booming communities to the North. This is happening literally all day, every day on all sides, all the way out to Denton. It feels like on 35 and then on 75 central, really it's like you said, it's almost all the way to Oklahoma. Certainly all the way to Sherman. Um, so there's a lot of desire and demand for the edges. The edges communities are different depending whether they're in the city limits or they're out in the County, but there's a lot going on. Um, I'll say this, um, as you move toward the edges of the Metroplex out, the outer lying rings of DFW, um, it doesn't necessarily get cheaper, but for the right buyers, it gets, it gets more exciting, right? We see people getting half acre and one and two acre lots instead of the fifth acre or quarter acre in town lots. Um, we do see some things being slower. For example, the sales cycle is a little bit slower, uh, less traffic, less options. Um, so kind of the pace of the market, the pace of business, the pace of life, um, can be a little bit slower. Um, but it's just different options and there's not one that's right or one that's wrong necessarily. Um, but there are some different options. Uh, we've named a lot of these communities, uh, several times, but some of the other ones that don't get mentioned quite as often are Forney. Forney's a rapidly growing area, let alone you mentioned, but I still kind of wrestle with that if that's even still the edge. Um, Forney, uh, Weatherford, Azle, these are communities, especially for homes on land, which we do a lot of, um, that are in demand both ways. A lot of people want to be there, but there are also people coming back from them. Springtown, Haslet, Midlothian, Ian mentioned Waxahachie, which I think is beyond the edge of the Metroplex, but depending on how you think of it, same drive as you know, parts of McKinney, the map don't lie. Um, and then Burleson and Haslet are, we can keep going. DFW has got so many little small cities, but, um, whatever you're thinking of as the edge, uh, we are here to help you buy and sell. Uh, we, we specialize in the neighborhoods that people really desire to be in and those small acreage properties with bigger lots, bigger backyards, half acre, up to three, four, five acres. We don't do a lot of farm and ranch, but we do those bigger backyard, larger lot properties. This is what we specialize in. This is what we love to do. That's the type of property I live in. If we can ever be of service to you, whether you're buying or selling, or you're thinking about relocating your company here, or you're interested in how do you even narrow down your choices in the Metroplex, uh, whether it be out on the edge, uh, or a little bit more interior, that's what we do all day, every day at the Todd Tremonti home selling team, you can just go to toddtremontiteam.com or our information is somewhere near this episode, whether you're catching the audio or the video, whatever that case is, we're pretty easy to find. If all else fails, just Google Todd Tremonti, spell it the best way you can. I'm sure you will find us. There's a bunch of resources on the website, by the way, too. If you want to search by a school district or search by city or price points. Um, and then of course you can map things and, and, and test travel times and stuff like that. Um, but that's what we do. We are here to help. I do think the edges of DFW Metroplex are sort of a unique subculture of DFW that isn't as true of as many other large cities where some of these communities really have truly unique identities. And you have almost every option under the sun to find a community that fits you, your family and your finances. So check it out. Let us know if we can help you Todd Tremonti team.com and we will talk to you on the next one.