PROPERTY OWNERSHIP SHOULDN’T BE OUT OF REACH

Wanting to Own Property Isn’t a Fringe Opinion

I believe everyone deserves a real shot at owning a piece of ground, whether that’s a starter home or land held for children down the line. Not a rented version of it. The actual deed, with their name on it.

That belief runs straight into what I see driving through McKinney, Melissa, Anna, Van Alstyne, and Howe: apartment complex after apartment complex going up where pasture used to be. Whether that’s investors chasing returns, developers filling a genuine housing gap, or both, the desire for true ownership remains unchanged. A 2023 LendingTree survey found 94% of Americans call owning a home part of the American dream, yet half of non-owners fear they will never achieve it.

The Math Changed. The Desire Didn’t.

In 1970, the typical new home cost about 3.19 times the median household income, according to an analysis by Visual Capitalist using inflation-adjusted figures. By 2023, that ratio had climbed to 5.32, and it peaked even higher, at 5.83, in 2022. In plain terms: buying a home used to take a little over three years of gross household income. Now it takes closer to five and a half. That gap didn’t open because people suddenly wanted more house. It opened because prices and incomes stopped moving together.

DFW Is Growing Fast Enough to Explain the Cranes

North Texas has been one of the fastest-growing metro areas in the country for two decades, and Collin County has taken a large share of that growth. Housing supply data compiled by Redfin shows that large multifamily buildings went from about 29 percent of the DFW metro’s rental housing stock in 2014 to over 46 percent by 2024, with roughly 31,000 multifamily units still under construction regionally as of late 2025, per Bisnow’s reporting on that data.

You can see it up close in Melissa, where Welker Properties broke ground on a $95 million, 343-unit build-to-rent community called Wolf Creek Farms. It’s a telling hybrid: detached homes with private yards and garages, bundled with apartment-style amenities like a pool and fitness center, but built entirely to rent, never to sell to the people living in them. That single project tells you something bigger developments won’t say outright. There is real demand for the feel of a house. There is not always a path to actually owning one.

Two Costs That Have Nothing to Do With the Sale Price

Even if a buyer clears the down payment hurdle, two other costs have quietly reshaped what “affordable” means:

• Homeowners insurance rates rose a cumulative 46.8 percent nationwide between 2020 and 2025, according to LendingTree’s 2026 State of Home Insurance Report, which drew on rate data from Quadrant Information Services and S&P Global’s RateWatch.
• Texas property taxes run structurally high. The state’s effective property tax rate sits at 1.245 percent of home value, compared to a national average of 0.888 percent, a gap that puts Texas 9th highest in the country according to a Construction Coverage study of U.S. Census data. The median Texas property tax bill is about $4,108 a year, roughly $900 more than the national median, despite Texas home values running below the national median.

Neither of those costs shows up in the sale price. Both of them show up every single year, for as long as you own the place.

Why I Can’t Always Give a Client the Answer They Want

This is the part that sits with me. When a buyer comes to me with a smaller budget, the honest inventory left for them often isn’t the home that actually fits their life. It’s the home that fits their pre-approval. Those are not the same thing, and pretending otherwise does a client no favors. Renting isn’t automatically the villain here either. Plenty of renters are making a rational choice for their season of life. But there’s a real difference between choosing that and having it chosen for you because ownership stopped being mathematically reachable.

I grew up looking at land listings I couldn’t afford, and I’ll be honest that I didn’t always make the choices that would have gotten me there faster either. A lot of us are the same way. We spend first and wonder later why the down payment never materialized. That’s a real piece of this. But it’s not the only piece, and pretending the entire affordability problem is a personal discipline issue ignores what insurance, taxes, and price-to-income data are actually showing.

Too often, buyers on tighter budgets are left choosing the home that fits their pre-approval rather than the one that fits their life. Personal spending habits matter—saving on purpose is essential—but rising taxes, insurance, and interest rates have altered the playing field.

There’s No Single Fix. There Are Real Moves.

I won’t pretend to have the policy answer here, because there isn’t one simple lever. But there are things within your control:

• Vote on local policy: Support leaders who address property tax reform and realistic housing development.
• Audit budget targets: Distinguish non-negotiable structural needs from aesthetic wants before viewing properties.
• Embrace simple living temporarily: Scaling back short-term expenses accelerates initial capital accumulation.
• Consult clear data: Work with a professional who provides direct facts about true purchasing power in today’s market.

 If you’re trying to figure out where you actually stand, that’s exactly what a strategy session is for. Bring your real numbers and your real timeline, and I’ll tell you what’s genuinely possible, not what’s easy to hear.