Dallas-Fort Worth takes top spot for home investors in 2025, new report

Dallas was the top city for housing investors in 2025 because of a housing market fueled by population growth and rental demand.

A study by Cotality, an international property analytics company, showed Dallas taking the top spot for total investor purchases in 2025.

Thom Malone, a principal economist at Cotality, said Dallas is one of the fastest-growing big cities in the country and that attracts investors.

“Investors see that growth,” Malone said. “They buy in there, thinking that that means there’s going to be growing numbers of renters.”

Dallas led the country in investor activity last year. In 2025, Dallas had nearly 46,000 investor purchases and almost 86,000 non-investor purchases. In both measures, Dallas outpaced other cities.

Cities like Houston, Atlanta, Phoenix and New York ranked just below Dallas.

In terms of the city’s share of investor purchases, compared to non-investor purchases, Dallas ranks 16th in the nation, Malone said. Cotality defines investors as someone who owns more than three properties when they buy a site.

Population growth is driving investor activity with Dallas and Houston leading other cities in acquisitions because of strong rental demand, according to the report.

Dallas proper’s population was estimated at about 1.32 million people in 2024, up from about 1.2 million people in 2010, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

When there are more people, there is a stronger demand for rental property, Malone said.

Rising housing affordability has also fueled demand for rentals, he said. Investors have jumped in to fill that rental demand, Malone said.

In 2021 and 2022, investors were pursuing real estate as prices grew quickly because it was a growing asset, Malone said. Now, prices aren’t going up at that same rate and there’s a strong demand for rentals. That presents a different opportunity for investors, he said.

Some investors are national entities but others are local people who are just buying houses in the city they live in to rent, said Daniel Oney, research director at the Texas Real Estate Research Center at Texas A&M University.

The difference in how investors register their purchases can also make purchases difficult to measure, he said. A company could be making purchases with a subcompany or a new LLC for every home. Because of that, data on investor purchases can be incomplete, Oney said.

Dallas is a fast-growing region and is attractive to someone wanting to buy and rent a home, Oney said.

“Any investor would be looking at markets where they think population growth is going up and work incomes are growing up, because then that will allow them to lease those houses and to lease them for a higher rental rate,” Oney said.