Rental / DSCR in Fort Worth

Budget roughly 2% to 2.5% of value a year in Tarrant County, then confirm it at the parcel. A typical Fort Worth property stacks the city, Fort Worth ISD, Tarrant County, Tarrant County College and the hospital district for a combined rate of about $2.24 per $100 of taxable value, with the city's own piece running about $0.67. Arlington adopted a total rate of $1.0929 per $100 for tax year 2025, which the city described as its lowest in 20 years. Published effective-rate estimates for Tarrant County disagree with each other, from about 1.52% to about 1.77%, and the practical spread across addresses is wider still, so a single county-level number is not something to underwrite to. The metro also spans three counties with three sets of rules: Tarrant, Parker for Weatherford and Johnson for Burleson. Pull the parcel's actual jurisdictions from the Tarrant Appraisal District, then run the real number through the DSCR calculator. Rates move year to year, and Fort Worth was weighing a rate increase for the coming budget, so re-check before you close. Your CPA is the right person for the planning side.

No. It is an owner-occupant benefit, and it does not touch investment property. Texas Proposition 13 passed on November 4, 2025 and raised the school-district homestead exemption from $100,000 to $140,000, with a combined $200,000 for owners 65 and older or disabled, worth roughly $350 to $500 a year to a typical homeowner. None of that reaches a non-owner-occupied rental, and neither does the 10% homestead appraisal cap. Two things follow. Your rental is taxed on full assessed value, and the seller's current bill is a poor proxy for yours if the seller lived in the house. A pro forma built off an owner-occupied neighbor's tax bill understates carry, often by enough to move the ratio. We underwrite the go-forward bill for the address rather than the historical one. Confirm your own position with your CPA.

Treat it as a zoning question first, and expect us to size the loan on long-term lease rent. Fort Worth prohibits short-term rentals in residential zoning districts and permits them only in mixed-use, form-based, commercial and industrial districts, with city registration and hotel occupancy tax on top. That restriction was upheld at the district court level in March 2025 in a case brought by a local short-term rental alliance and its plaintiffs, who said they would appeal on Texas constitutional grounds. We have not found a source confirming how that appeal came out, so nobody should be telling you the ban is final either way. Confirm the current status with your attorney before you underwrite nightly revenue on a Fort Worth parcel. Arlington is the settled case: short-term rentals are confined to a defined zone of roughly one mile around the entertainment district, and elsewhere in the city to RM-12, RMF-22, non-residential and mixed-use districts, under ordinances adopted in April 2019 that a Texas appeals court upheld. Arlington also charges a $500 non-refundable annual permit per address, and requires a fire and safety inspection, a local responsible party reachable 24 hours, $1 million in liability coverage, and quarterly remittance of a 9% local hotel occupancy tax. Grapevine has short-term rental litigation of its own, and Keller, Mansfield, Southlake, Burleson and Weatherford write their own rules, so do not carry Fort Worth's or Arlington's across to them. Our posture does not change with the outcome: the long-term lease carries the ratio, and nightly upside stays out of it.

Because hail makes insurance a volatile carry line here, and roof age gates both the premium and whether a carrier will write the risk at all. Texas logged 878 major hailstorms in 2024, meaning stones an inch or larger, nearly double the next closest state, and hail losses are the costliest peril in the DFW region. The statewide average annual homeowners premium reached $3,506 in 2025. Where 2026 lands is genuinely unsettled: the published forecasts we can find disagree with each other by roughly a factor of four, so quoting any one of them would be guessing rather than underwriting. That is why we want a bindable quote on the actual property with the actual roof before you close, not after. The same issue shows up at the exit, where a 15-year-old roof with hail history can fail a buyer's or a refinance lender's insurance step even when the rent is fine.

For a Fort Worth single-family rental, start around $2,190 a month for a 3-bedroom house, then verify it against your specific block. That figure comes from Doorstead's May 2026 Fort Worth rental report: 2-bedroom houses ran closer to $1,691 and 4-bedroom closer to $2,545, with a blended citywide asking rent (mixing houses and apartments) of $1,419, down 8.27% year over year, and about 22 days to lease. That is one property manager's own dataset rather than a public one, so treat it as a starting point, not a comp you can defend without your own verification. Assume no rent growth on top of it. The apartment supply wave that pressured North Texas rents is receding, with North Texas expected to deliver about 21,000 units in 2026, down from roughly 30,000 in 2025 and a peak above 44,000 in 2024, and DFW absorbing about 8,500 units against about 7,500 delivered in the first quarter alone. That is a supply observation, not a rent forecast. Run the DSCR calculator on the lease the property has today, and if the file only clears on a rent increase, it does not clear.

On headcount it does, and it is worth being precise about why. Fort Worth added 19,512 residents in the year to July 1, 2025, reaching 1,028,117 people and the top 10 largest US cities, the second-largest numeric gain of any American city that year. It is not the fastest-growing city by percentage, which is a distinction local investors notice: that list belongs to smaller Texas suburbs like Celina and Fulshear. Fort Worth is a volume story, and the job base under the northern half of it is substantial. AllianceTexas counts 590 companies and more than 66,000 employees against $18.3 billion invested through 2025, and far north Fort Worth holds the largest industrial construction pipeline in the country at 7.7 million square feet across 20 projects. What that supports is tenant demand, not a fast resale. Texas as a whole ran 5.3 months of supply and 64 days on market in May 2026 on Texas Real Estate Research Center data, so structure the file to hold through a slow sale window instead of counting on selling into a quick one. Longer fixed terms and prepay structures exist for that reason, subject to underwriting.

No. We write DSCR from $100,000 to $3,000,000. That start point rules out the lowest-basis doors in the metro, so if you are buying a $75,000 rental the better structure is usually a portfolio loan across several properties rather than one DSCR file. Terms run 30-year fixed or a 5, 7 or 10 year ARM, with flexible prepay structures and DSCR from 0.75. Subject to underwriting.

Plan on 20% of the purchase, plus closing costs and reserves. We go up to 80% LTV, so on a $330,000 Fort Worth purchase that is up to $264,000 from us and $66,000 from you (330,000 x 80% = 264,000). Then budget the carry, because it moves the ratio. Tarrant County investment property gets no homestead exemption and no 10% appraisal cap, so it is taxed on full assessed value, and North Texas hail keeps insurance a live number rather than a rounding error. Get the parcel's actual tax rate and a bindable insurance quote before you set the down payment you can afford. Subject to underwriting.

640 is where this program starts, so yes, at the line. DSCR qualifies off the property's rent, not your tax returns, and the ratio goes as low as 0.75. Credit still sets leverage: at the bottom of the range, expect us to trade leverage for the score rather than decline the file. Under 640, the way in is the asset-based side, where a Fort Worth fix and flip or bridge loan carries no minimum score at all. There is no hard credit pull to start. Subject to underwriting.