330 Dallas Listings. Five Clear the Purchase Test. Nine Cash-Flow at Asking.

By Steve Waller · September 10, 2026

What the screen was

Every active single-family listing inside ten miles of downtown Dallas, priced $80,000 to $300,000, at least 1,000 square feet, built between 1950 and 2010. Thirty-five zip codes. 330 listings.

No filter on days on market. No filter on listing language — not "as-is", not "investor", not "handyman". Those filters feel like they find deals and they do the opposite: they throw away the quiet listing that nobody has flagged yet, which is usually the one that works.

Sort by price per square foot, cheapest first, and carry the bottom hundred forward. Clearing the test means buying near half of what the finished house is worth, so only the bottom of that distribution can qualify. The hundred ran from $74 to $145 a foot.

The test itself

One line, and it is the whole thing:

ARV × advance rate − repairs − closing costs = the most you can pay.

Run at both a 70% and a 75% advance. Whatever is left after the advance covers repairs and closing is what is available for the purchase. If that number is below the asking price, the deal does not work at asking — no matter how good the house looks.

Ninety got an ARV. Thirty got the full treatment.

ARV came from closed sales in each property's own subdivision over twelve months, matched to within 20% of its size and 15 years of its vintage. Under three matched sales, the tolerance widens and the row gets marked thin. Nothing rests on a zip-code average, which is the single most common way an ARV goes wrong.

Thirty carried through to full sizing with repairs, closing costs and rent. Twenty-four survived. Six were thrown out.

Five cleared the purchase test

Five of the twenty-four can be bought at asking and still leave the loan inside 75% of the after-repair value. Two of those five clear on a plain median-condition ARV — no renovated premium assumed at all, which is the harder version of the test. One of the two comes within $1,293 of clearing at a 70% advance.

They are not exotic. A 1954 two-story in Oak Cliff. A 1972 ranch in East Dallas listed by an iBuyer with a concession attached. A 1971 six-bedroom that has been sitting 178 days. A 1962 house in southern Dallas with twenty-seven closed comps behind its number.

Nine of them cash-flow at the asking price

This is the part that surprised us. Rent evidence here is closed leases on the subject's own street, size-matched, going back four years — not an estimate off a portal.

Against that rent, nine of the twenty-four cover their debt service at a DSCR of 1.25 or better while paying full asking price. Fifteen clear 1.10. Gross yields across the board ran 9.3% to 21.3%.

That means a rental buyer does not have to win a negotiation to make these work. A flipper does. Same math, different test, and in Dallas right now the rental version is the easier one to satisfy.

Houston, for contrast

The same screen ran in Harris County the same week: 3,666 active listings, and not one cleared the purchase test at asking on a median-condition ARV. Three cleared only once the exit was priced at a renovated sale. On the rental side, five carried debt at asking.

Dallas produced five and nine off a pool one-eleventh the size. That is not a small difference and it is not noise.

What killed the six

Every rejection is worth more than the properties that passed, because these are the mistakes that cost real money.

• A subdivision name that spans two price worlds. One property's comp pool topped out at $1,925,000 — the neighbourhood name is shared by streets that have nothing to do with each other. The ARV it produced was nearly three times the asking price. Four comps. Nothing to lend against.
• An ARV that has to beat the street's best sale ever. Three properties needed an after-repair value 28% to 91% above the highest closed sale in their own subdivision in twelve months. If the finished house has to set a record, it is not a comp, it is a hope.
• Two structures sold as one listing. A main house and a detached second dwelling under one price. That is not a flip comp — there is nothing in the sold data shaped like it.

A low price per square foot very often means the house is simply oversized for its street. That is the recurring pattern, in both cities, and it is why the comp set has to be checked before the gap gets anyone excited.

What the numbers assume

• Repairs are banded by vintage, no photos reviewed: roughly $50 a foot on pre-1960 stock trading cheap, down to $25 a foot on newer houses. Every maximum moves with the real repair number.
• Closing costs are a schedule, not a percentage: $10,000 up to a $200,000 purchase, $15,000 from $200,000 to $300,000, $20,000 above that — solved against the purchase price the formula produces rather than against the list price.
• Debt coverage assumes 75% loan to value, 7.75% over thirty years, Dallas taxes at 2.2% of the purchase, insurance at $2,400, and a 7% haircut for vacancy and management.

One honest limit

330 active listings in the ring is what this MLS view returns for Dallas. The same screen shows 3,666 in Harris County. Treat the Dallas board as a real sample rather than the complete field — the properties on it are real and the math is real, but there is more inventory out there than one login can see.

Want the addresses?

The property-level list is licensed MLS data, so it does not go on a public page. It goes out one to one.

Reply to this, use the Request Financing form, or call 936-522-8951, and tell us which of the three you want — the rentals that cash-flow at asking, the flips that clear the purchase test, or both. We will send the addresses, the comps behind each ARV, the repair band and the maximum supportable offer, and run your own deal through the same test at no charge.

Sources

• North Texas Real Estate Information Systems, active and closed listings, 10 September 2026
• ACP Lending deal calculator

Market data is from public sources and is provided for information only. Nothing here is an offer of credit, a rate quote, or investment advice. Financing is subject to underwriting, lender approval, appraisal or valuation, title, insurance, property eligibility and program availability.

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