Foreclosure starts across the Dallas-Fort Worth area climbed about 24% from a year earlier, running well above the national increase of roughly 16%. Yet the metroplex is nowhere near the foreclosure levels seen during the Great Recession, and one housing data expert says the uptick, while worth watching, is not unprecedented.
That's the assessment from Aaron Wagner, head of data science at ATTOM, who joined Ron Corning on NTX Now in a discussion reported by KERA News. Wagner said the current pace of foreclosure starts in Dallas-Fort Worth is roughly three-quarters of the level the region averaged in 2015, when the area saw more than 1,000 foreclosure starts per month. This year, the metroplex has averaged a little more than 800 foreclosure starts per month, according to the same report.
The North Texas numbers track with a broader statewide trend. Texas led the nation in new foreclosure starts in July, recording 3,306 initial filings as total U.S. foreclosure filings rose 10% year-over-year to 39,906 properties, according to HousingWire. Separately, more than 2,700 residential properties across Collin, Dallas, Denton, and Tarrant counties entered foreclosure during the first four months of 2026, a roughly 33% increase over the same period in 2025, per the Land and Housing Report.
Why Equity Is Doing the Heavy Lifting
Wagner said Dallas-Fort Worth homeowners are in a strong equity position overall, and that cushion is central to why the rising foreclosure-start numbers haven't translated into a wave of forced bank repossessions. About 47% of mortgaged homes in the metroplex are considered equity rich, meaning the owner owes no more than half of the property's value, compared with 41% nationally, the report notes. On the other end of the spectrum, seriously underwater mortgages — where an owner owes at least 25% more than a home is worth — account for only about 1.5% of Dallas-Fort Worth mortgages, versus 3.2% nationally.
That equity gives distressed homeowners options, including selling rather than losing a property through foreclosure, Wagner said. It's a meaningfully different situation than the run-up to 2008, when widespread negative equity left many owners with no path off a sinking ship.
Still, Wagner flagged one group worth watching closely: buyers who purchased near the top of the market. Those owners have had less time to build equity through appreciation, leaving them more exposed if their finances take a hit.
A Housing Market Still Adjusting, Not Cracking
Dallas-Fort Worth's median sale price was about $377,000 in the first quarter, up 2% from a year earlier but still about 3% below the 2023 peak, according to the KERA News report. Wagner described the broader pattern as a fairly orderly adjustment, with sellers recalibrating to today's buyers rather than being overwhelmed by a glut of homes for sale. Price reductions have become more common as sellers reset their expectations, he said, and home prices in the region have been flatter since 2022.
Higher mortgage rates have cooled demand while also discouraging existing homeowners from selling, since many are locked into loans with rates well below current levels. Moving now would mean giving up a below-market rate, Wagner said, which makes relocating more expensive and reduces the number of homes coming onto the market — a dynamic that has helped keep inventory in check and prevented the kind of broad excess supply that could trigger a major price decline.
That supply-demand balance shows up in the numbers. Active housing inventory across Dallas-Fort Worth reached 4.6 months of supply with 35,885 active listings in July, according to KAT Realty, edging the market closer to the balanced six-month threshold without tipping into oversupply. Wagner said inventory is not increasing significantly, and Dallas-Fort Worth buyers do have more leverage than in recent years, but there isn't much reason for concern about the overall market.
Rising Insurance Costs Add a New Kind of Pressure
Even as mortgage defaults stay contained, homeowners insurance has added pressure through rising ownership costs, a dynamic the KERA News report also flagged. The strain shows up starkly in statewide data: homeowners insurance premiums in Texas surged 74% between 2009 and 2024 while median household incomes grew just 11%, leaving nearly two-thirds of Texas households unable to afford their county's median-priced home once insurance costs are factored in, per research from the Kinder Institute for Urban Research covered by KHOU 11. The average annual cost of standard homeowners insurance in Texas reached $4,585 in 2026 — 117% above the national average of $2,115 — after statewide rates grew 60% between 2019 and 2024, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas.
Those carrying costs help explain why foreclosure starts can climb even in a market where broad price collapse and mass negative equity aren't in play. Texas's fast-moving legal process adds another wrinkle: under Chapter 51 of the Texas Property Code, the state's non-judicial foreclosure system lets lenders move from a default and acceleration notice to a courthouse auction in as few as 41 days, according to the LRG Realty Blog. That timeline only begins once federal Regulation X protections lapse, which require a loan to be at least 120 days delinquent before a servicer can issue the first foreclosure notice — a buffer intended to give borrowers time to pursue loss mitigation options.
The compressed state timeline can produce sharp month-to-month swings in foreclosure-start figures even when underlying regional conditions remain stable. That contrast is playing out across the state: while home price corrections have been more pronounced in Austin and San Antonio through mid-2026, the Dallas-Fort Worth market has moved closer to stabilization, with the Fort Worth-Arlington submarket logging consecutive months of modest year-over-year price gains, according to the Texas Real Estate Research Center at Texas A&M University.
Population Growth Still Underpins the Region
Dallas-Fort Worth's underlying demand story remains a factor in the region's relative resilience. The metroplex added more residents than any other U.S. metro area in both 2021 and 2022, a growth streak that followed a longer-term housing shortage tied to construction pullbacks after the Great Recession, per the KERA News report. That population growth has helped absorb housing supply even as affordability pressures mount.
Statewide migration demand has cooled somewhat since its pandemic-era peak. Texas's inbound-to-outbound relocation ratio moderated to 1.2 in early 2026, down from a peak of 1.68 in 2021, dropping the state to 17th nationally for net inbound moving demand, according to moveBuddha data reported by Hoodline. Even so, Wagner's overall read on North Texas remains steady: foreclosure starts are rising faster locally than elsewhere in the country and running above the national average, but the fundamentals — equity, inventory, and population demand — still point to a market undergoing adjustment rather than crisis.
