Rapid growth in Texas’ suburbs has sparked a population boom adding millions more homes, according to data released Thursday by the U.S. Census Bureau.
As Texas’ population soared, the Lone Star State’s housing stock exploded, driven by significant gains in Collin and Rockwall counties.
North Texas’ Celina topped the list of fastest-growing cities in the nation with a population of 20,000 or more. The town’s population grew by 26.6%, more than 53 times that of the nation’s growth rate of 0.5%.
What’s “driving the demand is the builders,” said Jaime Resendiz, a real estate agent with over seven years of experience in North Texas.
“The reason [is] you have a lot of the big builders,” he said. “You have Island Homes. You have Lennar [and] Bloomfield. You have these mega-builders where they’ll build master-planned communities in these cities.”
The Census released details about cities’ demographics after updating its population estimates for counties in March. The information revealed eight of the 15 fastest-growing cities (of over 20,000 inhabitants) in 2023 are in Texas. Five of them are in Collin County.
While Dallas remained the ninth-largest city with about 1.3 million residents, Fort Worth, with 978,000 residents, surpassed San Jose, Calif., to become the nation’s 12th most populous city.
“There’s growth on the south side of the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex, but the north just blows it out of the water,” Resendiz said.
Meanwhile, San Antonio added more people — about 22,000 — than any other city in 2023, reclaiming its No. 1 spot on the list of gainers and pushing it close to 1.5 million residents.
South leads nation’s growth
Cities in the South grew the fastest in every category measured, according to the Census. Cities with a population of 50,000 or more grew by 1%. Smaller cities — from 10,000 to 49,000 residents — grew about 1.5% year over year.
“The population growth across the South in 2023 was driven by significant numeric and percentage gains among its cities,” said Crystal Delbé, a statistician in the Census Bureau’s population division.
Amid growth in the South, other fast-growing cities saw their rates of population change slow down.
For example, population growth in Georgetown, near Austin, slowed from 14.6% in 2022 to 10.6% in 2023. Population growth in Kyle, south of Austin, decreased by nearly 2 percentage points to 9.0% in 2023.
New York City remained the nation’s largest city as of July 2023, with about 8.2 million people, followed by Los Angeles, which reached nearly 4 million residents. Chicago ranked third in the country with 2.6 million residents, followed by Houston’s 2.3 million residents.
Housing growth
The nation’s housing stock — totaling about 145.3 million homes — grew by 1.1%, or 1.6 million units, between July 2022 and July 2023, according to the data.
Texas’ 12.4 million housing units trailed California’s 14.8 million units, as Harris, Travis and Collin counties were three of the top five U.S. counties that led in housing unit gains.
Between July 2022 and 2023, Harris County added 36,000 homes, Travis County added 24,000 and Collin County added 18,000.
Tarrant County, meanwhile, added 17,000 units, ranking eighth in the nation.
Unlike Dallas County’s most developed land, communities in Collin County like Celina, Princeton, Prosper and Anna have more untapped — and likely cheaper — land that allows for more rapid development, said Ashley Brundage, the CEO of Dallas Habitat for Humanity.
“It’s great that we’re seeing a lot of supply that’s getting added into Collin County,” Brundage said. “However, the supply that’s getting added is pretty far north and is in large family homes and not always at the affordable level of what we need to see happening in the inner city to help keep our workforce housed here.”
Adding a variety of types of housing for sale and rent for households of all incomes within Dallas’ city limits is a necessary part of development to a growing region, Brundage said.
“When we’re seeing costs go up as high as what we’ve seen — and people’s salaries and incomes have not been increasing at that same level — families are having to make hard decisions now between whether they pay for rent or they pay for food,” Brundage said.
North Texas has grappled with an increase in families who visit local food pantries to offset their household expenses in order to make rent, Brundage said.
Following decades of booming population growth, Texas now has the largest number of food-insecure residents — more than 4.9 million people — surpassing California for the first time, according to a Feeding America study released Wednesday. One out of three food-insecure Texans is a child.