Are you interested in house hacking Dallas?
In this post, we’re going to go through the information you should consider when doing it. We’ll see if Dallas is in a landlord or tenant-friendly state, the 6 demographic data points we use to analyze a market, and the house hacking strategies that might work well in a market.
Dallas: Landlord or Tenant Friendly?
From the state level, Texas is quite a bit more landlord-friendly than it is tenant-friendly. You can see where Texas falls on the graph here.
This is also partially why you’re seeing so many real estate investors taking an interest in Texas over the last few years.
Dallas specifically is a bit more tenant-friendly than other parts of the state, but overall, it is still in the landlord-friendly state of Texas.
Since you will have tenants when house hacking, it’s important to consider whether your location is landlord or tenant-friendly. In this case, Texas checks the boxes on this requirement (this is one of the reasons why I personally invest in Texas).
However, you should put some thought into this for your own risk tolerance and determine if house hacking Dallas is right for you.
Demographic Data Analysis
There are 6 demographic data points that I’ve learned to use when analyzing a market. They are population growth, income growth, property value growth, crime level, crime change, and job growth.
This was taught to us by Neal Bawa at Grocapitus and MultifamilyU.
When it comes to these six metrics, the table below shows how Dallas, TX compares to our benchmarks:
| Data Point | Benchmark (since 2000) | Dallas |
| Population Growth | 20% | 13% |
| Income Growth | 30% | 47% |
| Property Value Growth | 40% | 165% |
| Crime Level | < 500 | 449.3 |
| Crime Change | 0% or declining | -38% |
| Job Growth | 1% | 7.17% |
Overall, a house hacking Dallas looks good based on the 6 metrics above that we analyze.
You might be wondering why I say that when the population growth is below the benchmark and the crime level is pretty high.
Population growth has to be considered in relation to the size of a city. A major city like Dallas with over 1,000,000+ people can’t be expected to grow as fast as a smaller city with only 50,000-100,000 people. It’s the law of large numbers.
For Example, Fort Collins grew by 44%, but it’s much smaller than Dallas (Chicago actually shrunk 7%).
As for crime, it’s below the benchmark of 500, so that is acceptable. It’s also declining significantly. The crime level is down 38% since 2000.
Strategies for House Hacking Dallas
Since Dallas is so large, it has many types of properties. If you’re downtown, you’re likely looking at apartments, condos, and possibly some small multifamily. If you get outside the city and into more suburban areas, you can find single-family homes and small multifamily.
This means that you can utilize nearly any of the house hacking strategies. These strategies include rent-by-the-room when house hacking a single-family home, rent out additional units in a multifamily property, or even utilizing Airbnb.
The Airbnb strategy would likely be quite good, as Dallas is a vacation destination and draws a lot of business travelers. Plus, with a city so large, there are always events going on and people visiting family.
Overall, Dallas is a great city. I’ve been there multiple times myself, and even own rental property in the area.
If you’re moving to the area, or you already live in the area and you’re just doing research, you now know a house hacking Dallas could be a great option.
If you’re interested in house hacking Dallas, be sure to check out our free house hacking calculator to analyze all your potential deals. And, if you’re interested in learning more about house hacking, check out our book The Everything Guide to House Hacking.
