Average Rent in Dallas and Fort Worth 2026: What Landlords Can Charge

What is the average rent in Dallas and Fort Worth in 2026?

The average rent in Dallas was $1,605 a month in July 2026 and the average rent in Fort Worth was $1,625, according to the Zillow Observed Rent Index. Those are the numbers you will find quoted everywhere. They are also almost certainly the wrong numbers for your house.

Here is why. Both figures are all-homes averages, which means a studio in a Deep Ellum midrise and a four-bedroom in Prosper go into the same bucket, and there are far more apartments than houses. The single-family-only index for the Dallas-Fort Worth metro in that same month was $2,385 a month. That is $780 above the Dallas city average. If you own a detached rental house in North Texas and you price it off the headline, you will leave most of a mortgage payment on the table every month.

This guide gives you both numbers, explains which one applies to which property, and shows you what actually sets the price of a rental house in Dallas, Fort Worth, Arlington, Plano, Frisco, Irving, McKinney and the rest of the metroplex.

The Dallas-Fort Worth rental market at a glance

Every figure below is from the July 2026 Zillow Observed Rent Index, the most recent month published as of this writing. The index is a repeat-rent measure of asking rents on Zillow listings, smoothed and seasonally adjusted, reported for the 35th to 65th percentile of the market.

Measure	July 2026	July 2025	Year over year
DFW metro, single-family homes only	$2,385	$2,354	+1.3%
DFW metro, all rental housing types	$1,667	$1,665	+0.1%
City of Fort Worth, all types	$1,625	$1,622	+0.2%
City of Dallas, all types	$1,605	$1,600	+0.3%
United States, single-family homes only	$2,314	$2,247	+3.0%

Two things in that table are worth sitting with. First, the gap: $718 a month between the metro all-homes average and the metro single-family average. Second, Dallas-Fort Worth single-family rent is above the national single-family average, and it is the highest of the four big Texas metros. Austin came in at $2,321, Houston at $2,251 and San Antonio at $1,855 in the same month.

That is not the story the headlines have been telling about North Texas, and the reason is that the headlines have mostly been about apartments.

Why the average rent number is not your number

An all-homes rent average is a weighted blend of every rental housing type in a market. In Dallas and Fort Worth, that blend is dominated by professionally managed multifamily, because that is where most of the rental units are and where most of the new supply landed. A single-family rent index measures detached houses: yards, garages, driveways, school attendance zones, a separate roof.

The metro average and the house average are two different products measured two different ways. When a neighbour tells you rents in Dallas are down, they are usually repeating an apartment number. When an article says the average rent in Fort Worth is $1,625, that is true of the rental stock as a whole and largely irrelevant to a three-bedroom in Keller.

One useful sanity check before you trust any rent figure you read: ask what it is an average of. If the answer is "all rentals" and you own a house, add the spread. If the answer is "asking rents on new leases" and you are setting a renewal, remember that renewals almost always price below new-lease asking rents. If nobody can tell you what it is an average of, do not price off it.

Why are Dallas rents falling while house rents rise?

Because Dallas-Fort Worth is running two rental markets at once, and only one of them absorbed a supply shock.

The Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas put the multifamily picture plainly in March 2026: "The sharpest rent drops in the state have been in Austin, San Antonio and Dallas," and "Austin leads the Texas major metros in rent concessions followed by Dallas." Vacancy peaked in mid-2024 and has improved since, but Dallas Fed economists Laila Assanie, Lorenzo Garza and Kelly Klemme attribute that improvement to increased concessions, flexible lease terms and more competitive pricing rather than to genuine tightening. Multifamily construction permits have since fallen across the major Texas metros to slightly above prepandemic levels, which means the wave that caused the discounting is thinning rather than building.

The official rent statistic tracks that apartment-weighted world. The Bureau of Labor Statistics Consumer Price Index for rent of primary residence in the Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington area stood at 327.411 in August 2026, down from 332.601 in January. That is about 0.6 percent below August 2025 and 1.6 percent below the January 2026 peak, and the index fell in six of the seven monthly moves this year.

Now put the single-family series next to it over the same window.

Month	DFW single-family rent (ZORI)
December 2025	$2,341 (trough)
January 2026	$2,342
February 2026	$2,350
March 2026	$2,355
April 2026	$2,369
May 2026	$2,379
June 2026	$2,388 (peak)
July 2026	$2,385

Single-family rent in Dallas-Fort Worth bottomed in December 2025 and has climbed 1.9 percent since. Over the same eight months the apartment-weighted CPI fell 1.6 percent. Those two lines are moving in opposite directions, and no single "average rent in Dallas" number can describe both.

The longer view makes the point harder. The DFW all-homes rent index in July 2026 sits at $1,667, which is below where it was in July 2022, when it read $1,674. Four years, no net growth. The single-family index went from $2,194 in July 2022 to $2,385 today, a gain of roughly 8.7 percent. Same metro, same four years, two completely different outcomes.

The practical takeaway for an owner: a supply glut in apartments is not a referendum on your house. It matters at the margin, because a renter comparing your home against a concession-heavy lease-up has an alternative, but it does not set your price.

Average rent by Dallas-Fort Worth city

City-level rent varies far more than the metro average suggests. The table below is the July 2026 Zillow Observed Rent Index for the major DFW cities. One caveat you should carry into it: Zillow publishes its single-family-only index at metro level but not by city, so every figure here is an all-homes number. Use it to rank cities against each other, not to price a house.

City	July 2026	Year over year
Frisco	$1,852	-0.4%
McKinney	$1,806	-1.9%
Mansfield	$1,736	+0.9%
Plano	$1,722	-0.7%
Fort Worth	$1,625	+0.2%
Irving	$1,611	+0.6%
Dallas	$1,605	+0.3%
Denton	$1,533	-3.2%
Arlington	$1,525	+1.5%
Garland	$1,512	-0.2%

The pattern is a familiar one in North Texas: the Collin and Denton County suburbs with the strongest school districts carry the highest rents, and they are also where the most new supply has landed, which is why Frisco, McKinney, Plano and Denton are the four cities in the table showing year-over-year declines. Arlington, with comparatively little new construction, posted the strongest growth in the metro at 1.5 percent.

For a far more granular view, we maintain a DFW rent report built from the Department of Housing and Urban Development FY2026 Small Area Fair Market Rent data, which benchmarks two-bedroom gross rent ZIP code by ZIP code across the Dallas and Fort Worth-Arlington HUD metro areas. It is a different measure than the Zillow index and answers a different question, but it is the best public source for how sharply rent levels change between adjacent ZIP codes in the metroplex.

What actually moves your number in DFW

Once you have accepted that the metro average is a starting point and not an answer, these are the variables that move a Dallas-Fort Worth rental house by hundreds of dollars a month.

• School attendance zone, not city. This is the single largest swing factor in North Texas, and it does not respect city limits. Two houses a mile apart in Frisco can feed different elementary schools and price $200 apart. Verify the actual assignment rather than assuming from the mailing address.
• County lines and the tax bill. Frisco sits across Collin and Denton counties; Grand Prairie touches Dallas, Tarrant and Ellis. The county affects your tax rate and therefore your yield, even when it does not move the rent.
• Age and finish level. Granite or quartz, luxury vinyl plank rather than carpet in living areas, and a modern kitchen consistently earn a premium over an equivalent-sized house with original 1990s finishes.
• Garage and yard. A fenced yard and a two-car garage are the two features that most reliably separate a house from the apartment alternative in a renter's mind, which is exactly the comparison you want them making.
• Commute geometry. Proximity to the Dallas North Tollway, 121, 635 or the I-35W corridor matters more to DFW renters than raw distance to downtown, because the metroplex has several employment cores rather than one.
• Competing lease-ups. If a new apartment community within a few miles is offering two months free, some share of your applicant pool is looking at it. You do not have to match a concession, but you should know it exists.
• Timing. April through August is when the largest pool of qualified renters in DFW is searching, as families move around the school calendar. A house listed in December competes for a much smaller pool.

What overpricing actually costs you

The arithmetic here is unsentimental, and most owners get it backwards.

Take a $2,385 house, the metro single-family average. Suppose you list it at $2,500 because a neighbour got that last spring. The house sits an extra five weeks before you cut the price back to market. Five weeks of vacancy on $2,385 is roughly $2,750 of rent you will never collect. To recover that through the higher rent you were chasing, you would need the $115 monthly premium to hold for two full years, and you do not get the premium at all, because you ended up leasing at market anyway.

Run it the other direction and the asymmetry is just as stark. Listing $50 below where you think the market is costs you $600 over a twelve-month lease. Being wrong by five weeks of vacancy costs you four and a half times that. In a market where a renter can walk down the street to a lease-up offering free months, the cost of being slightly ambitious is measured in weeks of vacancy, not in dollars of rent.

This is the entire case for pricing from live comparable listings rather than from an average, a memory, or last year's lease. You want the recently leased three-bedrooms within a mile of your house in your school zone, not the metro number.

Can I raise the rent at renewal in Texas?

Texas has no statewide rent control and no cap on how much you may raise the rent at the end of a lease term, and state law prohibits Texas cities from adopting rent control except under a narrow disaster provision. What binds you is the lease itself and the notice it requires.

What the market permits is the harder question, and in the autumn of 2026 it is asking for restraint on the apartment side and allowing modest increases on houses. Run the same arithmetic as above in reverse: a turnover on a $2,385 house costs you the vacancy period, the make-ready, and a fresh marketing and screening cycle. If a $100 increase pushes a paying, on-time tenant out and the house sits five weeks, you spent roughly $2,750 of vacancy plus turn costs to chase $1,200 a year. A modest increase a tenant accepts almost always beats a large one they decline.

The separate question of what notice you owe and when is a legal one rather than a market one, and we cover it in our Texas rent increase laws guide. For the wider set of rules governing a Texas tenancy, start with our Texas Property Code Chapter 92 guide. This article is about the market number; those two are about the legal frame around it.

Where a manager fits in

You own the house and you make the call. What we do is make sure the call gets made on real numbers rather than on a metro average or a hopeful guess.

On the homes we manage across Dallas, Tarrant, Collin and Denton counties, that means pricing from live comps in your actual ZIP code and school attendance zone, listing with photography that earns the showings, screening thoroughly enough that the application you accept is the tenancy you get, and telling you honestly in week two when the market disagrees with the price. We price Plano, Frisco, McKinney, Allen, Irving, Arlington, Mansfield, Grapevine and the Dallas and Fort Worth core cities off their own comps, because, as the table above shows, they are not one market.

We charge a flat monthly fee for that, starting at $139/mo on annual billing. Which matters more in a pricing article than it might sound: on a percentage fee, your manager earns more when your rent goes up, which is a strange incentive to attach to the person advising you what to charge. Your management cost should not rise just because your rent did.

If you want a real number for your specific Dallas-Fort Worth home rather than a metro average, start with a free rental analysis. For the fuller local picture, see our Dallas-Fort Worth property management page, our guide to choosing a DFW property manager, our breakdown of what property managers charge in Dallas-Fort Worth, and our analysis of the best DFW suburbs for rental property investment. Owners comparing Texas metros can also read our average rent in Houston, average rent in San Antonio and average rent in Austin breakdowns.

Frequently asked questions

What is the average rent in Dallas in 2026?

The Zillow Observed Rent Index for the city of Dallas was $1,605 a month in July 2026, up 0.3 percent year over year. That figure covers all rental housing types together and is dominated by apartments. Across the DFW metro, single-family homes specifically averaged $2,385 a month in the same month.

What is the average rent in Fort Worth in 2026?

The Zillow Observed Rent Index for the city of Fort Worth was $1,625 a month in July 2026, up 0.2 percent year over year, fractionally above Dallas at $1,605. Both are all-homes figures weighted toward apartments, so a detached house in either city typically leases well above them.

How much does a single-family house rent for in Dallas-Fort Worth?

The single-family-only Zillow index for the DFW metro was $2,385 a month in July 2026, up 1.3 percent year over year. That is $718 above the metro all-homes figure of $1,667 and $780 above the Dallas city figure. Zillow publishes this single-family series at metro level only, not by city.

Are Dallas rents going up or down in 2026?

Both, depending on which market you mean. The CPI for rent of primary residence in Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington fell from 332.601 in January 2026 to 327.411 in August, about 0.6 percent below August 2025. Over the same stretch metro single-family rent rose from $2,342 to $2,385. Apartment rent is falling; house rent is not.

How much does a three-bedroom house rent for in Dallas?

Neither Zillow nor the Bureau of Labor Statistics publishes a verified bedroom-by-bedroom average for Dallas, so there is no reliable metro number for a three-bedroom specifically. The $2,385 figure covers all detached rental houses together, and a three-bedroom in Frisco and a three-bedroom in south Oak Cliff are not the same product. Price from live comps in your own ZIP code and school zone.

Which Dallas-Fort Worth cities have the highest rents?

On the July 2026 Zillow all-homes index, Frisco leads at $1,852, followed by McKinney at $1,806, Mansfield at $1,736 and Plano at $1,722. Fort Worth sits at $1,625 and Dallas at $1,605. Garland is the lowest of the major cities at $1,512.

Why is Dallas rent falling when the population is still growing?

Supply, concentrated in apartments. The Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas reported in March 2026 that the sharpest rent drops in Texas have been in Austin, San Antonio and Dallas, and that Austin leads the state in concessions followed by Dallas. Multifamily permits have since declined across the major Texas metros to slightly above prepandemic levels, so the supply wave is thinning.

How long does it take to rent out a house in Dallas-Fort Worth?

No primary source publishes a verified days-on-market figure for DFW leases, so treat any single number you see as an estimate rather than data. Use your own listing as the instrument: if fourteen days of active marketing produce no showings, the price is wrong.

What is the difference between fair market rent and market rent in Dallas?

Fair Market Rent is HUD's estimate of the 40th-percentile gross rent, meaning rent plus tenant-paid utilities, for standard-quality units in a ZIP code. It is a housing-assistance payment benchmark, not an asking price, and a well-maintained single-family home routinely leases above it.

Is Dallas-Fort Worth still a good rental market in 2026?

For single-family owners the fundamentals held up through the apartment correction. Metro single-family rent of $2,385 in July 2026 is the highest of the four major Texas metros, ahead of Austin at $2,321, Houston at $2,251 and San Antonio at $1,855, and above the national single-family average of $2,314. The softness in the headlines is a multifamily story.

Sources and last reviewed

• Zillow Research - Zillow Observed Rent Index, metro and city files, July 2026 release (single-family-only, all-homes, smoothed and seasonally adjusted)
• Zillow Research - Zillow Observed Rent Index methodology
• U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics - Consumer Price Index, rent of primary residence, Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington TX, series CUURS37BSEHA, through August 2026
• Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas - "Texas multifamily housing yet to stabilize; downside risks remain," Laila Assanie, Lorenzo Garza and Kelly Klemme, March 23, 2026
• HUD - FY2026 Small Area Fair Market Rents, Dallas TX and Fort Worth-Arlington TX HUD Metro FMR Areas
• Flat Fee Landlord - DFW Rent Report 2026, city and ZIP-level analysis of HUD FY2026 Small Area Fair Market Rent data

Last reviewed September 12, 2026 by the Flat Fee Landlord Dallas-Fort Worth team. Market figures are the most recent published at that date: the Zillow Observed Rent Index was current through July 2026 and the Bureau of Labor Statistics rent index through August 2026. This article is general information for property owners, not legal advice.