Many North Texas suburbs saw an uptick in single-family permit activity to start the new year, an optimistic sign for the housing market across Dallas-Fort Worth.
During the first month of 2024, residential homebuilders added approximately 134 single-family permits in Frisco, 114 in Little Elm, 75 in Prosper, 245 in Celina, 268 in McKinney, 202 in Princeton, 33 in Melissa, 130 in Anna, 40 in Sherman, and 91 in Denton, according to new data provided to The Dallas Express by Addison-based Tomlin Investments.
While many North Texas suburbs saw year-over-year increases in residential permit activity, others remained down compared to the same month a year earlier.
The suburbs with year-over-year increases in single-family permits in January include Frisco (+103%), Little Elm (+217%), Prosper (+188%), Celina (+71%), McKinney (+447%), Princeton (+512%), Melissa (+14%), Anna (+712%), and Sherman (+186%).
The North Texas suburbs where single-family permit activity decreased on a year-over-year basis or remained unchanged include Denton (-22%), Krum (-17%), and Sanger (0%).
At the local level, City data shows that Dallas’ Development Services Department (DSD) issued 191 single-family permits in January 2024, a nearly 10% decrease compared to the 212 issued in January 2023.
Even though DSD added fewer single-family permits year over year, the department managed to reduce its median turnaround time from 78 days to 10 days. This marked a roughly 87% drop in the median time DSD took to issue a single-family permit, according to the City’s residential permit activity dashboard.
Despite a reputation for permit delays and long review times, DSD has accelerated its permitting turnarounds since DSD Director Andrew Espinoza took over in the summer of 2022.
“When I joined the Development Services Department in the Summer of 2022, I took on the challenges of improving our customer service delivery, response times, consistency, and permitting software platforms,” said Espinoza in DSD’s annual report. “I am pleased with the direction and trajectory of our organization and am 100% confident we will steadily improve.”
Although DSD has fast-tracked the building permit process for residential developers, City Manager T.C. Broadnax’s developmental department is still working to accelerate permitting times for commercial developers, as previously reported by The Dallas Express.
