Denton has been ranked the fifth-best midsize real estate market in the United States, scoring 68.08 in WalletHub's 2026 study.
The company it keeps is striking. Frisco took first at 70.72 and McKinney second at 69.83, which means three of the top five midsize housing markets in the country are North Texas cities. Murfreesboro, Tennessee and Durham, North Carolina fill the other two places.
Denton reached that group by a different route than its neighbours.
How the ranking is built
WalletHub compared 300 U.S. cities on 17 metrics grouped into two dimensions. The housing market itself carries 80 of the 100 points, covering things like the Zillow-based home value forecast, median days on the market and the share of mortgages that are seriously underwater. Affordability and the local economic environment account for the other 20.
That weighting matters when reading the result. A high placement describes a market that looks healthy and is expected to hold its value. It is not a finding that homes are cheap.
Cities are graded within population brackets: large is above 300,000 residents, midsize is 150,000 to 300,000, and small is under 150,000.
A university town, in the employment figures
Where Frisco has corporate relocations and McKinney has defense manufacturing, Denton has students and the institutions that teach them.
The University of North Texas is the largest employer in the city at roughly 8,891 staff, according to the city's annual comprehensive financial report. Texas Woman's University adds about 1,077. Between them, higher education accounts for close to 10,000 jobs in a city of this size.
Denton ISD employs about 4,000. Denton County government, based here as the county seat, accounts for roughly 1,987, and the City of Denton about 1,900. The Denton State Supported Living Center employs around 1,727.
Manufacturing is present too, and it is not incidental: Peterbilt Motors runs both its headquarters and a plant here, employing about 2,000. Safran Electrical and Power adds roughly 571.
What a student population does to a housing market
A large university changes the shape of local housing. It creates persistent rental demand that does not track the ordinary buyer market, it supports a smaller-unit housing stock than a pure commuter suburb, and it provides a floor under occupancy that is fairly insensitive to what interest rates are doing.
It also means a meaningful share of the city's residents are not in the market to buy at all, which tends to moderate price pressure compared to somewhere like Frisco.
Sourced median sale prices for Denton were not available in the material reviewed for this article. The city's employment base, however, is a matter of public record, and it is the clearest reason its housing market behaves differently from the rest of the top five.
Sources
https://wallethub.com/edu/best-real-estate-markets/14889
