In Lavon, Texas, about 96% of investor activity is new construction. In Garland, twenty-odd miles southwest, it is 1%.
Both towns are Dallas-Fort Worth. Both have active cash buyers. A wholesaler who learned the business in one would be nearly useless in the other, and that is the single most important thing to understand about working this metro.
There are two investor markets stacked on top of each other here, and the line between them runs roughly along the northern edge of Dallas County.
Lavon runs about 96% new construction; Garland about 1%.
North of the line, investors are building
Go up into Collin County and the numbers stop looking like a resale market.
Lavon runs about 96% new construction. Celina is near 91%, Princeton 88%, Farmersville 83%, Anna 76%. In each of these towns the median investor-owned property was built in 2025 — not renovated in 2025, built.
In Celina and Anna, the most common investor-owned property type is not a house at all. It is residential vacant land.
So the buyers up there are builders and land investors. They are not shopping for a bad roof and good bones. They are buying lots, putting houses on them, and moving. Fewer than 3% of investor-owned properties in any of these towns predate 1980 — Lavon's figure is effectively zero.
Bring a 1970s fixer to a Celina buyer list and you will get polite silence. It will not be because the market is slow. Celina turned over about 40% of its investor-held property in the last twelve months.
Inside Dallas County, investors are rehabbing
Now the other half of the metro.
Grand Prairie: 4% new construction, median year built 1972, and about 60% of investor-owned property built before 1980. Irving: 6% new construction, median 1973, 54% pre-1980. Garland: 1% new construction, median 1976, 58% pre-1980.
Dallas proper sits at 14% new construction across about 13,038 investor-held properties, median year built 1984.
This is the market most people picture when they say "cash buyer." Older housing, buyers who want condition problems because the problems are the margin, exit by resale or rental.
The typical investor-owned property in Garland runs about 1,471 square feet. In Celina it is about 2,894. Same metro, and nearly double the floor area.
Plano is the interesting case
Plano sits in Collin County, north of the line, and behaves like neither side cleanly.
About 11% new construction, median year built 1994, and 19% of investor-owned property built before 1980. That is a mature suburb: not the 2025-vintage construction of Lavon or Celina, not the 1970s stock of Garland.
It is a useful reminder that "north of Dallas County" is a rough heuristic, not a rule. The towns driving the building boom are the ones still being built — Celina, Princeton, Lavon, Anna, Farmersville. Plano finished growing a while ago, and its investor market reflects that.
Allen shows the same pattern more mildly: 20% new construction, median 2007. The further out and the newer the town, the more the market is about construction.
Competition is not where you would guess
One more number flips an assumption people carry into this metro.
Dallas has about 2,117 active investors chasing roughly 13,038 investor-held properties — about six properties per active investor. McKinney has about 1,144 investors across 10,910 properties, roughly ten each. Celina has 567 investors across 11,243 properties, about twenty each.
So the established urban market is the most crowded on a per-buyer basis, and the fast-growing exurb is the least. That is the opposite of how it feels from the outside, where the boom towns look like where everyone is rushing.
What it means practically: in Dallas or Garland you are one voice among many chasing the same older houses, and speed matters. In Celina or Lavon there are fewer buyers but each is larger, so a single relationship carries more weight — and losing one costs more.
Why this ruins otherwise good outreach
Here is the cost of getting it wrong.
You build a buyer list that works in Mesquite — older housing, investors who rehab. You take that same list, or that same pitch, to a contract in Princeton because it is all "DFW." Nothing lands. The buyers up there do not want a renovation project, and the ones who do are twenty miles away in a different county.
It runs the other way too, and this direction is more expensive. A vacant lot pitched to a Garland buyer list reaches investors who overwhelmingly buy finished older houses. Some will take a lot. Most have never built anything and have no interest in learning on your deal.
The mistake in both cases is treating a metro as one market because it shares an airport.
What the split does not tell you
Two honest limits.
It does not mean no rehab buyers exist up north. Celina has 567 active investors. Even at 91% new construction, that leaves real buyers doing other things. The share tells you what the market is weighted toward, not what exists in it.
It does not tell you anything about pace on its own. Lavon and Celina are both heavily new construction, but Lavon's purchases accelerated over the last year while Celina's were roughly flat. Strategy and momentum are separate questions.
The check before you call
Look up the city, not the metro. Dallas-Fort Worth is not a market for this purpose. Celina and Garland are.
Read new construction share and median year built together. Above about half with a median in the 2020s, you are in builder territory. Under about 10% with a median before 1990, condition is the whole game.
Check the pre-1980 share if your deal is an older house. That number tells you whether buyers in that city have ever dealt with your kind of property.
Three lookups, maybe two minutes, and you know whether your contract belongs in that city before you spend a day calling people about it.
The broader habit is to stop trusting metro-level advice. "Dallas-Fort Worth cash buyers" describes a builder in Lavon and a rehabber in Garland equally well, which means it describes neither usefully. The city row is where the real answer lives, and it is one lookup away.
