Estate sales in Dallas-Fort Worth

Two centres, not one

Most large American metros have a single core with suburbs around it. This one does not, and the federal government agrees. The Census Bureau divides the region into two metropolitan divisions, Dallas-Plano-Irving at roughly 5.7 million people and Fort Worth-Arlington-Grapevine at roughly 2.7 million, precisely because the two labour markets do not fully overlap. Both central cities are past a million residents.

Eleven counties. Around eight thousand seven hundred square miles of land. Thirty two miles of motorway between the two city halls, which is forty minutes with no traffic and considerably more with it.

The old houses and the buyers are in different counties

Just over a quarter of the region’s three point two million homes predate 1980, and they are not spread evenly. The spread from oldest to newest is thirty two years.

The old ground is the inner ring of Dallas County. Garland sits at a median build year of 1978, Dallas at 1983, Mesquite and Richardson at 1984, the county overall at 1984. Irving reads 1987 and Carrollton 1989.

The new ground is the northern arc and the eastern edge. Collin County and Denton County both sit at 2005. McKinney reads 2007. Frisco reads 2010.

The telling detail is that Dallas County was the only one of the eleven counties to lose population in the most recent year of estimates, while Collin County added nearly forty three thousand people. The county holding the oldest housing is shrinking, and the counties holding the newest are where everyone is moving.

That is the structural reason a route planner earns its place here rather than a list. The sale is in Garland and the buyer is in Frisco, and the trip between any two promising neighbourhoods is half an hour to an hour of motorway.

How to think about a weekend

Pick a lane rather than a city. The region rewards depth over breadth because the driving punishes breadth so heavily.

The Dallas inner ring is the deep end. Old East Dallas, Oak Cliff and the older Dallas County suburbs hold most of the region’s prewar housing, and Dallas requires a permit that names professional operators explicitly.

The Fort Worth inner ring is denser per mile than anything on the Dallas side, because most households there own rather than rent. It is also the strictest place in the region for signage, so expect to find sales through the app rather than by spotting an arrow.

The northern suburbs split by age. Plano is the deep one, with nearly four in ten homes built before 1990. McKinney has a genuine Victorian core around its courthouse. Frisco is too new for much of this and we say so on its own page.

Denton and Arlington sit at the edges and behave differently again, Denton because it is nearly equidistant from both downtowns with open country around it, Arlington because nobody arrives there by train.

One rule that is not local

Every city here sets its own permit rules, and they differ more than you would expect. Two sales a year in Fort Worth, Irving and McKinney. Three in Plano and Arlington. None at all in Frisco, which has no ordinance on the subject.

Above all of that sits a single state rule worth knowing. Texas exempts an individual from holding a sales tax permit if they sell only one or two taxable items in a twelve month period, or if the goods were bought for personal use and the year’s total stays at or below three thousand dollars. So a city permitting three sales a year is not the same as the state treating three sales as tax free.

• DallasEstate sales in Dallas
• Fort WorthEstate sales in Fort Worth
• PlanoEstate sales in Plano
• ArlingtonEstate sales in Arlington
• FriscoEstate sales in Frisco
• McKinneyEstate sales in McKinney
• IrvingEstate sales in Irving
• DentonEstate sales in Denton