Starter home - neighborhood/city help

[meganc2013]

Thanks for all the fantastic suggestions; I'm looking into them all now. We anticipate buying about 10 months from now so we are doing a lot of research and hoping we won't be priced out of everything by then as the market seems to be heating up everywhere

[bencronin04]

Originally Posted by aggie972

Does anyone have any strategies for speculating on areas that have a good shot of gentrifying, turning around, etc or have any resources for how one should try and make that determination?

With schools not being an immediate concern, I wouldn't mind my first house being one that I would really prioritize resale value on.

From what I've seen/heard it looks as if the east side of White Rock lake is going through it right now. I've also noticed it a bit in the lower priced areas of 75209, but it's taking a little longer.

[Considering Coming Back]

Originally Posted by aggie972

Does anyone have any strategies for speculating on areas that have a good shot of gentrifying, turning around, etc or have any resources for how one should try and make that determination?

With schools not being an immediate concern, I wouldn't mind my first house being one that I would really prioritize resale value on.

I don't think Dallas has had much gentrification. At least not in the sense that low income/minorities are displaced from generational homes. That's how I understood it in DC and NYC.

For example, I don't consider what's happening in Little Forest Hills, Old Lake Highlands, or Casa Linda to be gentrification because no one is being displaced and the demographics of the neighborhood aren't changing. Those have always been very, very white areas. The new residents are slightly more educated and slightly more affluent, but that's incremental change, not gentrification.

'Uptown' has gentrified. It used to be a black neighborhood near Booker T and a Mexican neighborhood north of the AAC. But that gentrification was done by large land developers. They spent decades assembling large tracts and much of the area was vacant when they started building. That process is now playing out along Henderson between Central and Ross.

The closest thing we have to honest-to-goodness gentrification is in Bishop Arts. Down there you can buy a dilapidated house from a multi-generational Hispanic family for <$150K, put $50K into and sell it for $250K in a couple of years. If that's what you are interested in, that is the place to do it.

But if you just want to guess where real estate will appreciate slightly faster than the regional average then most everything inside Loop 12, north of I-30 will do that.