First Time House Hack in Dallas, TX

[James Longmire]

Hello Everyone! Wanted to connect with anyone who had some advice on which markets in the DFW area that would be best for a House Hack strategy? The goal would be to house hack an ADU, and rent it out as a short or medium term rental. I have looked into Irving, TX but I'm wondering what other areas could be suitable for this strategy? Thanks!

[Bruce Lynn]

@James Longmire as @Andrew Postell mentioned, there are very few listings with ADUs in DFW area. Not impossible, but tough to find one that works like that in the price range most people want to be in. There are some in the general M streets area of Dallas, and Arlington Heights area of Fort Worth. As @Jay Hurst mentioned, this is mainly due to zoning laws. Places like Flower Mound which is likely mostly zoned of single family only, typically won't have true ADU units that you can rent out. Some ciities like Flower Mound also have lots of HOAs which probably won't allow ADUs for rental. As @Jay Hurst mentioned the neighborhoods we typcially see in Dallas or Fort Worth with good ADUs are mostly the garage type apartments. I've been in probably 1000s of houses in Irving and I think I've seen 2 with ADU type accommodations. There's a few larger homes with pool houses, but typically they don't have kitchens by code as they don't want to change the single family zoning to multifamily which that would probably be considered.

As far as I know you can't really set up good searches on the typical public search sites that you mentioned to specifically search for homes with ADUs, so unless they're using that specific keyword, I would expect they are difficult to locate. The smart realtors can set you up with specific searches though directly from the MLS that can include much more specific searches to try to capture these features. While we don't always use them we have a 200 search options to narrow things down for you.

Probably the best house hack right now is a 4-5 bedroom single family home.  Stay in one bedroom and rent the others.   I think you can find that in Irving...and many other cities.

Best wishes....