10 Lies People Believe About Moving to Dallas-Fort Worth

Lies, lies, and the lying liars that tell them in what we're talking about today. That's an actual book, by the way, I think you're lying. Look it up. I like what you did there, but you look it up. I think it's by Al Franken. What will be true today? If you ain't lying, you ain't trying. Uh, Courtney, what's, what's the lies, lies, lies song. You know what I'm talking about? I'm not going to sing it. All right, folks. We're talking about lies today. What are the lies people say, tell perpetuate about Dallas Fort Worth residential real estate. This is DFW real estate weekly. I am Todd Tramonti and I'm joined by the triple C herself, full price. Courtney, here she is. And the English only telling the truth today. The English wonder himself, the Yanni Donnie, Mr. Ian Daniels here. He is here. He is losing the third person so far. We'll see how that goes. All right, folks. These are the lies that people tell about DFW real estate. Now, this isn't just your, uh, your YouTube top 10 list. These are, uh, through 20 plus years of helping people buy and sell Dallas Fort Worth real estate, whether that be neighborhood homes or homes on land, whether that's far East Dallas or far West Fort Worth, North or South. These are the things that happen all the time that get in people's way when they're moving their families to the Dallas Fort Worth area or the moving their families or themselves within the Dallas Fort Worth area. These are the things that people tend to believe oftentimes subconsciously, meaning they're not like writing this down. Like this is definitely true. It's, these are the things that are impacting decisions that often end up negatively impacting people's families, their finances, their home, their timeline, and their move. Now, how many of these do we have? Do we have like three of them? I guarantee you that we have at least 10. My gut says we'll end up with more, but these are the 10 lies top 10 list. You might say of the 10 lies that people tell and are told about moving to Dallas, Fort Worth, Texas. You know, this is the time of year for fantasy football, and I love a good top 10 list. Now I want to, I want to clarify one thing before we dive into the list and we'll be in the list in the next 30 seconds is that these are not, these are not necessarily things that people say out loud. I already hinted at like some of this is subconscious. It's these are lies. People believe these are untruths. These are misleading thoughts. These are myths. Okay. So number one, where do we go? Number 10 year. It doesn't matter. Well, they're not in a specific top 10 order, but what I'm going to ask of each of us to rank by the end of this loves the ranking to give like your top three in order. I think this is an important, uh, I agree. That's why I'm saying top three in order by the conversation because it is influencing what you believe about coming here. It's influencing what people spend. It's influenced the mistakes people make and all sorts of other things. So here we go. Oh, Ian's mom. Okay. Number one, um, that living in DFW is sort of a uniform experience, meaning like DFW is sort of all the same, right? Like it adds no pockets of culture. Right. Like if I was in Chicago and I said Dallas, Fort Worth, that that means one thing instead of Allen is different from Richardson is different from Benbrook is different from white settlement is different from elite. Like it sounds silly, but people do generally believe this. They're like, Oh, my company's moving to the Dallas, Fort Worth area. I need a house. And we'll say something like, you know, what, where do you think you might want to look? And they're like, what's the big deal? Yeah. DFW. You're like, that's not, it's not really a thing. I mean, it's a thing. It's just a whole bunch of things that make up that thing, which is true of all things. See what I did there. Now you might say to me, Plano, Texas, and I'm like, great east side, west side, north, south, different schools, different streets, different trees, different, you know, shade. It literally real estate is so local, but this is, this does happen where people hear DFW and they think, Oh, that's that the big city in Texas and whatever, where can I get a five bedroom under 600,000? And whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. We got to get a little more specific. So, so the, the big lie, the big thing that people believe is that. DFW is pretty uniform and it's just not, that doesn't mean there's like wild extremes, but there's a very wide spectrum of price and culture. When it goes into what we were saying, I think a week or two ago about like, how do you define DFW? Right. The high, you know, the north, south, east. And we're like, yeah, it's a very like big geographical area. So number two speaks to this, but it's different and not everyone believes this same lie, but a lot of people have this idea that DFW is country. I love living in the country. I live in DFW. That's, that's Ian's American accent. It just doesn't sound weird to me. It's not crazy that people think this because the state of Texas alone has very, uh, I just say that the assumption of people outside of Texas about the culture in Texas is often the extreme it's from movies and things like that. So people will literally say things like, do people really ride horses to school? And it's like, okay, that does happen. Some places in Texas, I would imagine it's very rare today in 2026. I've seen it. I've never, no one's ever in no school I've ever been to. Did anyone like regularly ride a horse to school? But in high school, I knew some people that rode a horse to school. I love living in Texas cause we all drive. We all ride horses and we all drill for all. I'll say what I do love about this town is the, the boot wearing like that. Nowhere in the country are people wearing cowboy boots the way we do. You're not dressing up. That's your shoe. I don't wear boots. I wear boots every single day, but I don't think of them as like cowboy boots, but I know that they are. And I have different boots for different things, right? Different boots for like out hunting, fishing, working. And then there's two kinds of work boots. Ian, there's work boots for like outdoor messy work. And then what I call my work boots is the ones I wear to work every day. And I work in the air conditioned office most of the time. All right. So number two is that DFW is country. Now look, there are definitely parts of Dallas Fort Worth that are country, but like we said, in number one, there's so many parts of Dallas Fort Worth that if you are living in uptown Dallas, you can't see grass anywhere. It's all condos and townhomes and towers and concrete jungle, as they say. But that's actually also true of like downtown Fort Worth downtown. Anyway, it's true of most of the suburbs around here where like you might actually know where there's still a big piece of land that has a few cows, which around here is not like the country. It's like, there's still some cows there. I understand if you're from New York city, you're like, listen, dude, that's the country. And you probably didn't say, listen, dude, cause that's a little country. But my point is DFW is not all the same. Therefore DFW is not all country. There's still some country around here, but it's pretty far out. If you really think about it, if you're in the city limits of Dallas, you got to go quite a ways before you get to what I would consider the country. And the same is even true for Fort Worth. Okay. Number three is that Fort Worth is sort of a country, small town, a rural, small town. It wants was, and it has held on desperately to the reputation that it is cow town and TCU is a big college. There's some other colleges in Fort Worth, but, um, for a lot of people in a lot of places, they think of it as that, like it's still really country. It's kind of out there and it's a college town that Texas Christian university is there. Um, and that's its personality. That's the dominant piece of its culture. When in reality, Fort Worth today is what Dallas was not that long ago. It's like the 10th largest city, 10th or 11th largest city in the United States. It is number 10 on the list. And I have a fun little extra top 10 game that we're going to play right now. Can you name the other nine cities in the top 10 largest U S cities? I'll give you three mistakes. You can work as a team. I don't know that we have time for this, but my answer is yes. I can name New York, New York, Chicago, LA, Houston. Yep. LA, Chicago, Houston. That's top four. Yeah. What do you think about Miami? I don't, I actually don't think Miami's in there, but it could compete. I'm just trying to Jacksonville, Orlando. I'll give you one in Arizona, one in Arizona, Phoenix for sure. One in Pennsylvania, Pittsburgh for sure. Man of Philadelphia. Oh, that's, you're right. That's what I meant. The Hill country, San Antonio. Yeah. Oh yeah. Yeah. San Antonio. California, San Diego. And then where we all live. DFW Dallas. Yeah. Um, the fun little extra game. He didn't love it. No, no, it's fine. It just has nothing to do with our topic, but I like it. You said top 10 for Fort Worth is number 10. It's a big city. Number four. DFW has no nature. Lies. I had now, to be clear, I made a mistake on a YouTube video years ago. I said, we had beaches. Texas doesn't have beaches. Oh yeah. And people went nuts in the comments. Like I grew up going to Galveston like every other weekend. I know that's, but for whatever reason, the way I said it sounded like I was saying there are no beaches. It's very much a beach. It's like a hundred percent human. It wasn't, it's literally an Island. Um, Bahamas. Anyway, I live near a nature preserve. DFW does have nature. Now it's certainly not the nature destination. People aren't traveling here because of the, you can only see and experience that in Dallas. Hey, if you want to see a Heron in a lake, my backyard got one, uh, it's not Colorado. It's not Colorado. It's not Utah. It's not, you know, the Everglades. It's not Appalachia. I mean, it's not a place that's known by natural beauty, but obviously we have parks and recreation. We also have a lot of lakes around here. And then we do have a good bit of beautiful sunrise, sunset country around us, but it's not a tremendous amount of like rolling elevation. It's not a, you know, we have the Trinity river, not necessarily known as like a landscape feature. Um, so it's not true that DFW has no nature. There's no such thing as that. Montana might have bison and elk, but we have armadillos and possums. We do. Uh, it's fairly flat. Um, and we're a good bit away from the places where you would be like a destination, but there are some beautiful spots. There are some things to visit. There are some cool things where you can get out of the craziness and enjoy a little piece, a little natural element. Number five, uh, DFW is basically barbecue and Tex-Mex as far as food goes. I would take great issue with this one. This one is a lie, a lie, a lie. Um, DFW has almost as good of a food scene as any country in the world. Clearly there are probably a few New York city, maybe Paris. Um, but there are not many that have a better variety of excellent food than DFW. Now we're nowhere. We're not very close to the ocean, but obviously we're getting fresh seafood every single day. So there are Michelin star restaurants here. There is incredible, um, mom and pop hole in the wall spots. There's a tremendous amount of ethnic diversity, price diversity, quality diversity. So you're getting all of it. I mean, you could have the nine course with wine pairings and you can have the taqueria that blows your mind that it's very, very, very good. And then of course there's plenty of mid-level and bad stuff. But, um, but we have excellent barbecue. I would say the best in the world. Those of you from Memphis and other places, we love you. You're just wrong. You have your own kind of barbecue, which is not as good as ours, but thanks for trying. And I will still eat it. Let's just not act like it's as good. I want you to know I'm showing restraint to not bring the, get into a barbecue conversation. No, it's okay. It's okay to keep your incorrect thoughts to yourself. What do you think? The other thing would be Tex-Mex and I don't even think Dallas has the best Tex-Mex in Texas. It's, there is some good Tex-Mex here, but it's not Houston and it's not South Texas. Um, but there is some, yeah. And people who travel here are like, Oh, I want to go get tacos or burritos. And it's like, yeah, here's where you should go. And I want to go get barbecue. And I get it because it's great, but there's excellent sushi in Dallas. There's really, really good French food in a couple of places. There's a couple of really good Italian spots. So it is, I would be so bold to say is that's our activity here is eating. So you better believe they're going to do it well. Yeah. According to AI, Dallas ranks as a mid to upper tier food city nationally, normally in around about the top 25. What does AI know? AI doesn't eat. That's I think that's pretty good. There's a lot of cities in the U S I would, I would literally say I would put Dallas or DFW easily in the top 10 in the world. And I've had, I haven't traveled like every edge of the globe. I'm just saying the vast majority of places you go, you're like, we're so spoiled and DFW that we have so much food and so many options and so many choices that when you go other places, it's just not mind blowing because we have so much, so many good food choices here. I thought top 25 in the U S pretty good. It is. It's, it's pretty good. It would top 10 would still be in the top 25. You're saying in the world, I am saying that. 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. Um, number six, DFW is cheap. Now I'm not going to tell you there are not places in or around DFW that are affordable, but it's a bit of a lie. The reason this lie gets perpetuated is for years and years and years and years and years, the big cities in Texas were thought of as relative to the other big cities, big employment centers in the country as one of the absolute cheapest relative to the big cities in California, relative to the big cities in New York, back at back in the day, even relative to the big cities in Florida. Now, some of those areas are still so out of touch with reality. So crazy expensive that DFW is still relatively affordable compared to them, but certainly not nearly as affordable as it used to be. And even relative to some of the other affordable places like Florida or Arizona, and certainly some less populated States, Oklahoma, Arkansas, places like that, um, has become a more expensive place to live, uh, relative to, uh, surrounding areas, other States. Um, so there are plenty of affordable places. I say plenty. I mean, depending on how far you're willing to go around DFW, there are still affordable homes, affordable food, affordable recreation, especially relative to some of the most expensive places in the country. But I think the gap has closed a bit. Um, and so I wouldn't say as a whole that that's a fair representation of Dallas Fort worth that it's a cheap place to live anymore. I wish it was a little cheaper, um, but relative to those other places still, uh, pretty affordable. Okay. Number seven, uh, and feel free to restrain yourself here. But, um, the, the thing we have on the list is Google maps knows how long your commute will take. The, the, the lie here, uh, is that like DFW is predictable to navigate. Okay. The re the reality here is there's so much growth and so much expansion that you never really know on any one given day, how far any commute is and you really can't trust your Google map, your Apple map, your ways. Oh, you can trust ways. Ian is not sponsored by ways, but if, if the people at ways would like to reach out, he's available for conversation. You can trust. I'm a Google maps, man. Wait, no, no. I'm an Apple girl. No. Apple maps is the worst. I hate Google maps. It's literally ways is the best. Apple second year. I love that. We're all taking a different route. Who do you think of the three of us has spent the most time on the roads running around town in their career? Me. That's incorrect. That's might be. How long were you a cop? Cause I know you beat the streets a lot when you're a cop. Oh, you're only in one city, but you were out route driving around a lot. Just in the five years. Okay. So real estate agent for 20 something really aggressively out on the streets for prove 15. I've been a mother in show me your data. I'll show you my tax returns with my mileage on it. Literally. So back up off of me. Anyway, uh, Google apps forever was the most accurate. That could have changed recently. I do think ways does an excellent job. I think Apple maps is a joke. Anyway, the point we're making here in the lie is that, uh, like circumnavigating traveling around DFW is predictable. It's just not. You have to be extra cautious and extra prepared because what is 30 could turn into 60 minutes and you just never know when that's going to happen. It's not like, Oh, it's during afternoon drive time or a morning drive. It could happen anytime. So you just have to be extra cautious and DFW. Um, that's a bit of a joke from us to you, but the reality is, uh, no one trusts the maps because things change so much. Uh, and so you want to be very careful where you live and work and try to avoid the worst of it. Okay. Number seven, number eight, uh, no state income tax means that taxes are low. That's a bit of a lie. That's a bit of a misleading thought. Now taxes are lower than lots of places, but the fact that we have no state income tax does not mean we're not being taxed in a juicy, juicy way. Our property taxes in Texas, obviously DFWs in Texas are higher than a lot of other States. Now some would say it's still a better deal overall than other States. But the lie we were saying is that like, it's a very, very low tax area. It is a healthy, attractive environment for business. It's a, it's a no state income tax, but property taxes are a bear, um, two and a half to three ish percent in most areas of your property's value and values are going up. So that's one where we're basically saying, um, the misleading thought that perpetuates real estate around DFW is that because there is no state income tax, it's a cheap tax place to live. Whereas the reality is it may be cheaper than other places, but because of property taxes, it's not terribly cheap. They gonna get that money. They going to get one way now there's property tax reform going on. And there has been a little bit of relief in the last couple of years. And there are a lot of proposals that there could be more, but as has been stated, they don't get that money one way or to other, but it would be nice to see it not be tied to properties where people get priced out of their homes that they've already paid for it. Moving right along. Um, uh, number nine, you have to move an hour out of town to get land. That's actually not true. There's obviously more land. The further out you go, it's more available and it may be more affordable. Um, but there is land available without going way, way outside of town. Now, when we say land, we typically mean small acreage. One of the things we specialize in is helping people buy and sell small acreage properties. I live on a couple acres. You can still get a large lot without going an hour from Dallas or an hour from Fort worth or say an hour from Frisco. Um, as a matter of fact, in every single one of those cities, we can show you, and this is one of the things we specialize in where the one acre lots are that are still available. 10 minutes from a skyscraper, you know, 15 minutes from major hospitals and airports and job centers and things like that. Of course, there's more of that the farther out you go, but you do not have to go an hour, uh, from the major population centers to get land. Um, it's still a priority in many cities around here to protect green space, to protect large lot properties. Um, and there's a few really cool remnant properties where you might see 60 or 80 acres surrounded by suburban development, but they still have significant land. So that is still possible. That is still available without having to go, you know, hours away from the city, uh, number 10. And I would guess there may be a couple of more still coming bonuses, but officially on our top 10 lies about DFW real estate, moving to DFW and living, moving within DFW. New construction is always a better deal. I mean, that is a personal preference. Yeah. And financially it's just not always a better deal. But there was a period, uh, immediately post COVID where the housing inventory, the amount of available homes in DFW was so low that that was sort of the message. You would read these headlines about Dallas Fort Worth from all over the country. And it was like, you know, if you don't build it in DFW, you're not going to get it. It's like you just got to move there and buy something new. And remember, you may not have even been on the team yet, Courtney. I know Ian remembers this, but we had quite a few people call off the radio show or the podcast or the YouTube channel. They would move here from California. They had sold one house there and they wanted to buy two new ones here. And everybody couldn't believe, and everybody wanted new brand. They were like, Oh my gosh, we've been living in these busted up houses and paying a fortune. I want two brand new ones. So the, the, the, the personality, the assumption of DFW was like, go there and buy new. That's the best thing for you. What we're saying is that's not obviously always the best thing for you. It's certainly not always the best deal financially, but it's also obviously not always the wisest deal you're talking about preference and your preference is obviously for. Holder. And my hot take would be, and we're not discussing it on this week's show, but just the negative headlines that you're seeing about DFW housing. I mean, I is influenced by all these new houses. And it's influenced by the amount of homes builders build or don't build amount of land they build financing availability. The reality is that DFW still has a healthy real estate market. It's one where it actually makes sense. There's a lot of give and take between buyers and sellers. Sellers don't have the dominance over buyers that they had for super, super long times, but buyers also don't have anywhere near the dominance over sellers that sellers have had over buyers for such a long time. There are pockets right now where buyers have the advantage. There are pockets right now where sellers have the advantage. And in most places, it's kind of this murky, sloggy, slightly inefficient middle ground where everyone's having to figure it out house by house situation by situation, because it's, it's all over the place. So if you are thinking about making a move to the Dallas Fort worth area, that is what we do. I'm Todd Tremonti. We all work together on the Todd Tremonti home selling team day in and day out, helping hundreds of people buy, sell, figure out what they need for their housing every single year. But DFW is a unique and very big and very diverse and very complex community. I think the common thread through all 10 of these lies, these myths is that DFW is made up of lots of smaller communities that each have their own value propositions, community culture, positives and negatives, depending on what you want. And so if you were going to move to DFW or within DFW, you need a local expert. You need someone who understands the hyper local market, the top of the block versus the bottom of the block, the way the trees grow on that side of the street versus that side of the street, where does the school district start and stop? Where does the County start and stop? What is that city crossover into the other city where if you're driving around, you wouldn't necessarily know that which areas are a little bit more family oriented that have larger homes, which areas are a little bit more, you know, seeking the slower pace of life type stuff. If you're looking for those types of things, you can just go to our website, Todd Tremonti team.com. You could Google my name, Todd Tremonti. We're pretty easy to find. You can communicate with us at whatever manner you're comfortable with right now. You can chat, call, text, jump on a zoom meeting, or we could certainly meet in person. But all that starts at Todd Tremonti team.com. Now it looks like you got something on your mind. I'm just going to give you my top three from the list. Cause I said I would do that at the very beginning of the show. These are the top three lies, meaning the three most misleading things about DFW real estate, making a move here. Number three, the DFW has no nature. Okay. For sure. I think that's number three. By the way, if the people at ways don't call, I think the people at the nature preserve should call it clear sponsorship. No one waves the flag harder. The no state income tax means low taxes because golly, when I gave him my house tax, I would want to crawl into a corner and cry a bit ugly. And number one, in my opinion, the biggest lie, DFW only has barbecue and Tex-Mex because you don't eat that. I think both of them are overrated. Yeah, that's foolishness, but you're right. You're you're, you have a prerogative to your own top three. Courtney, did you work out your own top three or did you just want to move on from this unplanned segment? Um, I, uh, I really don't have cause I just think it's just a powerful ball of 25 minutes. I gave you to prep for your powerful ball of life. Here's my top three number. Number three is that DFW is uniform. I do think people kind of think of it as like, Oh, it's the, it's the country Dallas Cowboys country thing. And it's so diverse. I'm originally from Houston. And so I grew up obviously knowing a lot about Dallas, but not spending a lot of time here. Moved here just after college. I've been here longer now, but all that to say, I still think people can live in Dallas and get the feel that like, I mean, all these places are kind of the same and we help people move within DFW and they're like, Oh my gosh, I wish I had known about this. We were talking about Roanoke the other day and somebody was like, where even is that? And it's like, no, it's actually a really cool town with a lot of cool culture going on there. Okay. Number two to me is the food thing. It's the DFW only has barbecue and Tex-Mex. I think that's silly. It is what guests want when they visit here. But the reality is we really are spoiled with just a lot of great options for a ton of good food. My wife and I always say when we travel, our top priority is food. And when we come home, we should do that here. We should venture out and try new things and drive a little bit farther and look up the lists and stuff instead of having just our normal patterns right across the street from us. We have a great little Cuban food spot. Oh yeah, we do. The best Cuban sandwich in DFW is right by our office. It's really, really, really good. The third thing I'm going to say, or really my number one, if we're going to do this in reverse order, is that DFW is cheap. I don't think that is as popular a lie right now as it was for 30 years, but I do think we are seeing people with a little more sticker shock when they make the move here than we used to. It used to be a sold one in California. Give me two. Now it's like, man, I, I can't necessarily get what I wanted to get. And we're hearing that from a lot of people. So here's my message to those people. And then we'll wrap it up. DFW is still a phenomenal place to live. We just ran through 10 lies about the city. What's really true is you can find what you're looking for in DFW. You can find your people, you can find your property type, you can find your price point, you can find your pace of life. It is an incredible place to live. And I say that as someone who is not originally from here, who made a move here by choice and is really, really glad to be here. As we help a lot of people move here, we help people meet their budget. We help people find the size, the location, the commutes that fit their lifestyles. And we believe your home should do that. It shouldn't just be a necessity. It should be something that helps you thrive, that supports your marriage, your parenting, your family, your finances, your rest, your recovery. Whether you're single, you have a small family, you have a big family, you're buying with friends, you're investing. We are here for you and DFW is a wonderful place to do it. I don't know of a better city in America to live. Primarily. We can visit other places for those other things, but this is a wonderful place to live. And if we can help you with that, but a Todd Tremonti team.com share this episode with somebody that may be thinking about making a move to or within DFW so they can get a clearer picture of what it is that living here looks like. And we will talk to you on the next one.