When residents were counted in the 2020 Census, Haslet, Texas had approximately 2,000 residents. By 2025, the town will have approximately 5,267 residents, according to Census Bureau estimates. This is a nearly 167% increase over five years, making it one of the fastest growing municipalities in the already rapidly growing Dallas-Fort Worth metropolitan area.
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Real estate agent Curtis Rose was already there.
“I feel like there aren’t that many agents that are really committed to the Haslett area right now,” Rose, a North Fort Worth area agent now with Keller Williams, told Inman. “But over the next year, I think this is going to be one of the areas that people are looking at.”
Rose has been a licensed real estate agent for nine years, four of those years growing businesses in North Fort Worth towns like Haslet. Haslet is one of many small- to medium-sized suburban cities in the United States that are growing rapidly, according to 2025 vintage population estimates released March 14 by the U.S. Census Bureau.
Eight of the 15 fastest-growing U.S. cities with populations of 20,000 or more between July 1, 2024 and July 1, 2025 were in Texas, and four of those were in the Dallas-Fort Worth metropolitan area alone, Census data reveals.
Celina, Texas, topped the nation in population with 64,427 residents, an increase of nearly 25% for the second year in a row, with Princeton, Melissa, and Anna (all DFW suburbs) also rounding out the top five.
Fort Worth, Texas, had a population increase of 19,512 people from July 1, 2024 to July 1, 2025, the second largest increase in the nation after Charlotte, North Carolina. As a result, Fort Worth’s population exceeded 1 million.
Rose is right in the thick of it, working on upscale deals in the North Fort Worth area, including Haslet, Southlake, Westlake, Argyle and Northlake. His lifetime sales are approximately $155 million, with over 263 closed transactions and an average sales price of $796,347. He lives in Haslett and works in a corridor he knows very well.
What’s it like to work as a real estate agent in one of America’s fastest growing markets? Ms. Inman recently reached out to Ms. Rose to learn more about her experience.
Stable while Fort Worth cools down
Haslet is located on the north end of Fort Worth, where the entire market has shifted toward buyers since the peak of the pandemic. In Fort Worth, the median home price was down nearly 1% year over year as of March 2026, according to Redfin data. Homes are on the market six days longer than a year ago, and sales volume is down slightly.
Rose describes the Haslett-Alliance Corridor submarket in which he works as “stable,” meaning it’s neither a buyer’s nor a seller’s market. Redfin data for Tarrant County, which includes Haslet, supports this to some extent. As of March 2026, prices are essentially flat year-over-year, homes are selling slightly faster than a year ago, and sales volume is increasing slightly.
Haslet is approximately 30 minutes from Southlake and downtown Fort Worth. Rose said it’s not a destination market, but rather a convergence point. It’s close enough to corporate employment centers, close enough to accommodate transplants, and close enough to provide the space and privacy pandemic-era buyers have begun to demand, but haven’t completely stopped demanding.
“Everyone used to want a small, low-maintenance garden,” Rose says. “Now I feel like everyone wants as much privacy as possible and as much peace and quiet as possible.”
Rose added that those moving to Haslett and the Alliance corridor are “high-income earners, corporate transplants, and families looking for more space and a highly regarded school district.”
Mike Roberts, co-founder and president of Draper, Utah-based City Creek Mortgage, has also noticed a shift away from urban centers in Sunbelt metropolitan areas such as the Dallas-Fort Worth metro. “This population shift away from premier metro centers is being driven by unprecedented demographic change,” Roberts told Inman.
Roberts said buyers are no longer just looking for a lower cost per square foot. They’re buying master-planned communities that “allow you to live the entire suburban lifestyle.” He added that remote work has lasting staying power, sometimes allowing families to avoid commuting to big cities altogether.
“Developers are responding to this growing need by quickly adjusting production to include housing specifically designed for this very segment of the mid-market,” Roberts said.
Explosive growth and star power
However, the privacy pitch in a suburb like Haslett comes with an asterisk.
Mr. Rose spoke candidly to buyers, especially out-of-state migrants from places like California, about how infrastructure hasn’t always kept pace with growth. One of Haslet’s main roads has now been changed from two lanes to four, and he admits traffic is “a bit crazy”.
The Haslett Parkway project, a four-lane east-west thoroughfare designed to handle freight movement and improve resident mobility, is being constructed in phases as part of the broader $64.4 million Alliance Texas/Haslett Accessibility Project.
“You have to be transparent about everything you do, because if you don’t, it can quickly become a sticky situation,” Rose said.
Alliance Texas is a 27,000-acre master-planned mixed-use development located in north Fort Worth developed by Ross Perot Jr.’s Hillwood Company. Development has been ongoing since 1989, when Hillwood partnered with the FAA and the City of Fort Worth to open Perot Field Fort Worth Alliance Airport as the world’s first industrial airport.
Cultural footprints also add a different type of homebuyer to the mix.
Yellowstone creator Taylor Sheridan’s SGS Studios, a sprawling 450,000 square foot production campus built in conjunction with Paramount Television on the adjacent Alliance development, is the largest film studio currently operating in Texas. One of Sheridan’s new shows, “Landman,” is currently filming at the local Alliance Airport and in parts of the Haslet area, Rose said.
Phil McGraw, known to viewers as Dr. Phil, briefly operated Merritt Street Media Network out of the same premises, but the venture filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in July 2025, at the same time suing distribution partner Trinity Broadcasting Network for breach of contract. Regardless of the challenges McGraw faces, Rose said both media businesses are drawing more people to the Fort Worth area and even to suburbs like Haslett.
Competition with mega builders
This growth is good for Rose’s business, but it could complicate going public.
The same population boom that is drawing buyers to the Alliance Corridor has also brought big builders like D.R. Horton, K. Hovnanian and Highland Homes into the market with in-house sales teams, as well as price buys and closing cost incentives that resale inventory simply can’t match.
Both DR Horton and Meritage have already sold out communities in the area, and a new wave of developments are now on pre-sale. In this corner of North Fort Worth, the concentration of new construction has made selling existing homes “nearly impossible,” Rose said.
“Listing a property makes it difficult to compete with the incentives that come with new construction by big builders,” he said.
This is a two-speed market dynamic familiar to distributors in other high-growth Sunbelt regions. While the headline numbers look healthy, the tailwinds are unevenly distributed depending on what you sell.
everyone is moving this way
Rose moved from Kentucky to the Dallas-Fort Worth area, where he had a steady career but felt he was reaching his limits. The math was straightforward: more opportunities meant more profits. He has now landed in a market that is attracting similar calculations from other agents.
New names are appearing on Haslett’s yard signs, and Rose expects the pace to pick up. For agents who have built positioning in places like Southlake and certain Fort Worth areas, the Alliance Corridor and Haslet represent the next concentration point. Establish fast enough and grow fast enough to justify the bet.
“There are a lot of buyers in Dallas and Fort Worth who don’t want to be in town anymore,” Rose said. “And everyone seems to be trying to come this way.”
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