Fort Worth Is the Only Major Texas Metro Where Prices Are Recovering
Texas home prices have fallen for 11 straight months, and April was the worst month yet. Every major metro in the state is getting worse except one. Fort Worth-Arlington's year-over-year decline narrowed to 0.4%, up from 1.1% the month before. That is Texas A&M's Real Estate Research Center reading the Texas REALTORS® MLS data, not a brokerage press release. Prices here are still falling. They are just the only ones in the state that have started to slow down.
Every headline about Texas housing right now is some version of the same story: inventory up, prices down, buyers finally catching a break. Statewide, that story is true and it has been true for almost a year. It is just not the story in Fort Worth, and the gap between the two is where the useful information sits.
What the report actually said
The Texas Real Estate Research Center at Texas A&M publishes a monthly report called Texas Housing Insight. It is built on Texas REALTORS® MLS data, it is publicly funded, and it has no house to sell. The June 2026 edition put it plainly: prices in Fort Worth-Arlington "are beginning to show early signs of recovery, with YoY declines down to 0.4 percent from 1.1 percent in March."
Set that next to the rest of the state and the sentence gets louder.
| Metro | Price change, year over year | Direction |
|---|---|---|
| Fort Worth-Arlington | -0.4% | Improving (was -1.1%) |
| Dallas | -1.3% | Getting worse |
| Houston | -1.7% | Getting worse |
| San Antonio | -1.9% | Getting worse |
| Austin | -3.3% | Getting worse (was -2.7%) |
| Texas statewide | -0.9% | 11th straight month of decline |
Source: Texas Real Estate Research Center at Texas A&M University, Texas Housing Insight (June 2026 edition, April data), from Data Relevance Project / Texas REALTORS® MLS data.
Five major metros. One of them is moving the right direction. It is the one most of the country still thinks of as Dallas's smaller neighbor.
Say the honest version out loud
Down 0.4% is still down. Nobody's house went up in value this spring. What changed is the slope: the decline got shallower here while it got steeper everywhere else. "Recovery" is TRERC's word for the direction of travel, and it is the right word, but it does not mean prices are rising in Fort Worth. It means Fort Worth stopped falling as fast, and it is alone in that.
Two more things worth knowing before anyone quotes this at a listing appointment. This is April data, published July 1, so it is roughly three months old by the time you read it. And TRERC's own preliminary look at May still points to broad statewide weakness. A one-month improvement is a signal, not a trend. We are telling you what the best available data says, including the part that could reverse.
The number to watch is not the price. It is whether the gap between Fort Worth and the rest of Texas holds for a second and third month.
Supply is why, and supply is the part that is not a fluke
Prices are an output. Inventory is the input, and the inventory picture explains the whole table above.
San Antonio added 12.6% more active listings than last year. Houston added 7%. Austin added 3.2%. Dallas-Fort Worth added 0.4%, which is a rounding error. And new listings in DFW are running below last year's pace. TRERC flagged that directly: new-listing activity came in weaker than expected across Austin, DFW and Houston, and fell below last year in DFW and Houston.
That is rate lock-in showing up in MLS data. Owners holding a 2% or 3% mortgage are not moving to buy at mid-6%, so the houses never hit the market, so the inventory that is drowning San Antonio never arrives here. With 30-year rates at 6.49% as of the June close and the Fed holding, that lock is not springing open this year.
What this changes if you are selling
The most useful number in the whole report is the one about concessions. When a Texas seller cuts price, here is what the median cut looks like:
- Austin: 5.4% off the initial list, about $19,000
- San Antonio: 4.6%, about $15,000
- Houston: 4.2%, about $15,000
- Dallas-Fort Worth: 3.0%, about $12,500
Fort Worth sellers are giving up the least ground in Texas. If you have been reading national coverage about buyers regaining the upper hand and assuming it applies to your street, it applies less here than anywhere else in the state.
That cuts both ways, and we are not going to pretend otherwise. A tighter market does not mean an overpriced house sells. Sold homes averaged 70 days on market statewide in April. Unsold inventory is averaging 90. The listings that sit still sit. What the data says is that the correct price in Fort Worth is closer to your list than the correct price in Austin, not that the price does not matter.
What this changes if you own a rental here
This report lands on our desk as an operating question, not a market-commentary question. Flat inventory and rate lock-in are the same force from two angles. The owner who cannot sell without giving up a 3% mortgage is the owner deciding whether to rent the house out instead, and that decision is getting easier to make in Fort Worth than it was six months ago, because the sale side is not offering the escape hatch anyone hoped for.
If you are weighing that call, the price trend matters less than the spread between what the house would net you in a sale this fall and what it would produce leased. In a metro where sellers are conceding 3.0% and prices have stopped sliding, that math is different than it is in Austin. It is worth running before you decide.
Why we watch this
Most of what gets published about the Fort Worth market is recycled national data with a local headline stapled to it. This is the opposite: a Texas A&M research center reading Texas MLS data and quietly reporting that our metro broke from the pack. Nobody local is writing it, which is exactly why it is worth writing. We would rather hand you the real number, lag and caveats included, than a confident story that falls apart in September.
Trying to decide whether to sell or lease it out?
That call comes down to your actual numbers, not the metro average. Send us the address and we will run the rent side against the sale side and tell you straight which one wins. No pitch attached.
All Panther Properties · Century 21 Alliance Properties
Call or Text (817) 420-0833 →Andrew Chavis · Century 21 Alliance Properties · License #0845090 · IABS Notice · Consumer Protection Notice. This article is for general informational purposes only and does not constitute financial, investment, or legal advice. Price, inventory, listing, days-on-market and concession figures are from the Texas Real Estate Research Center at Texas A&M University, Texas Housing Insight, June 2026 edition (published July 1, 2026, reflecting April 2026 data), drawn from Data Relevance Project / Texas REALTORS® MLS data. Mortgage rate figure is from TRERC's Texas Economic Outlook, July 2026 edition, reflecting the June 2026 close. "Fort Worth-Arlington" is a metropolitan division covering Tarrant, Parker, Johnson, Hood, Somervell and Wise counties and is not a measure of any individual city, ZIP code, or neighborhood. Metro-level trends do not predict the value of any specific property. Figures were current as of publication and are point-in-time; TRERC revises its data and preliminary May 2026 data indicated continued statewide weakness. Deemed reliable but not guaranteed. Verify current figures before acting. View sources and disclaimers.
