Grapevine

Grapevine sits at the northeast corner of Tarrant County, wrapped around the lake and pressed against DFW International Airport. It is the fastest housing market I have measured anywhere in the county, it carries one of the lowest effective property tax rates in the county, and it contains a school district boundary worth more than a tenth of a house's value.

Over the three years ending September 2026 it produced 1,369 closed sales across 272 subdivisions, at a median of $585,000. I'm a Texas broker and a Certified Residential Appraiser. Here is what those sales show.

The fastest market in the county

• Median 15 days on market
• 38.1% of sales go under contract within a week — the highest share I have measured anywhere
• Closings at 98.2% of original list
• Only 44.5% carry seller concessions, among the lowest shares of any market I cover
• Parcel-level failure rate 10.6% — about one house in ten

On values, controlling for house size, lot size and build year, Grapevine has moved +0.84% a year, which at p = 0.16 is not distinguishable from flat. Restricting to single-family only nudges it to +1.06% (p = 0.074) — suggestive of a rise, not solid enough for me to claim one.

Median price per foot by year: $258, $259, $256, $261. Steady.

Flat in Grapevine means something different from flat elsewhere, though, because of what it costs to hold.

The tax rate is the finding

The effective property tax rate here runs about 1.38%. That is the lowest of any market I cover below the million-dollar tier — only Colleyville (1.35%), Southlake (1.30%) and Westlake (1.17%) run lower — and against the rest of the county it is not a small edge.

The same house costs $5,149 a year more to own in north Fort Worth than in Grapevine — about $429 a month, before anyone discusses a mortgage.

Put that against the price difference and the comparison changes shape. A buyer looking at Grapevine and at the new-construction ring north of Fort Worth is not only comparing purchase prices; they are comparing carrying costs that differ by more than four hundred dollars a month for the life of the ownership.

The usual caveat still applies, and it applies harder in an expensive market: the tax figure on a listing is the seller's, not yours. A long-held homesteaded assessment is capped, and the cap releases when the house sells. Ask for the current assessed value and what it becomes without the seller's exemptions.

Carroll ISD is worth 11 to 14%

Most of Grapevine is Grapevine-Colleyville ISD — 1,207 of the sales. But 162 sales, in the northern edge of the city, fall into Carroll ISD instead.

Controlling for house size, lot size, build year and date of sale, Carroll-zoned Grapevine carries a premium of 15.9% at p < 0.0001. That was my first answer and it is too high, for a reason worth explaining.

Carroll-zoned lots attract better houses. 12.3% of the Carroll-side sales were built since 2015, against 6.0% on the Grapevine-Colleyville side — builders put larger, higher-specification homes on Carroll lots precisely because of the district. A model that controls for build year linearly does not fully absorb that, so part of what looks like a school premium is actually newer and better construction.

Tightening the controls:

Every specification is significant at p < 0.0001, so the premium is real. The honest range is 11 to 14%, and the tightest comparison — like-sized houses only — gives the lowest figure. I'd use 11% when the houses are genuinely comparable and treat anything above that as partly a construction-quality effect rather than a school effect.

Against the others I have measured:

The Carroll-zoned subdivisions are Winding Creek Estates, Parra Linda Estates, Trail Lake, Lakeside Estates and Lakeview Estates — a cluster at the north end running to a $685,000 median against $565,000 for the GCISD side.

It remains the single most valuable thing to establish about a Grapevine address, and the boundary does not follow the subdivision names in any way you could guess. Verify it with the district for the specific property.

What it costs

• Median close $585,000 on 2,281 square feet — about $259 per foot
• Median lot 9,017 square feet; median build year 1987
• Closed prices ran $220,000 to $3,600,000
• 33.3% had a pool — the highest share outside the million-dollar markets of Colleyville, Southlake and Westlake
• 27% carry HOA dues, median $300 where they exist

The stock is concentrated: 835 of 1,369 sales — 61% — were built in the 1980s or 1990s, with a scattering of genuinely old houses near the original town centre and about fifty from the 2020s.

The two ZIP codes are not comparable. 76051 is Grapevine proper — 1,335 sales, $575,000 median, 14 days. 76092 is the 34 sales that sit inside the Southlake postal boundary, at a $1,272,500 median and a 1.25% tax rate. That's a different market that happens to carry a Grapevine address.

What I could not measure

Grapevine Lake is the city's defining feature and I expected it to show up in the sales. It doesn't — at least not in a way I can defend.

Only eleven closed sales in three years were flagged as waterfront. Their median was $930,000, which sounds like a premium until you notice their price per foot was $263 against the city's $259 — essentially identical. Those houses are expensive because they're large, not demonstrably because of the water.

With eleven sales I cannot separate the two, and I am not going to assert a lakefront premium I haven't measured. If you're buying or selling genuine waterfront here, the comparable set is thin enough that it needs to be built by hand rather than pulled from an average.

What actually moves a Grapevine price

• The school district, before anything else. Worth 11 to 14%, invisible on a map of subdivision names.
• Size, at 0.70. Square footage does most of the work but not proportionally — a per-foot multiplication overstates large houses and understates small ones.
• The lot, more than in the Mid-Cities. The lot coefficient here is 0.20, roughly four times Bedford's, so land is doing real work in this market.
• Vintage, modestly. About 0.41% a year — present, but far less than the 0.85–0.89% in Hurst or North Richland Hills, because the stock is concentrated in two decades.
• Pools, at a third of all sales, are common enough to be a standard line item rather than a differentiator.

Thirty-five-year-old houses

A median build year of 1987 puts most of this stock at the age where roof and HVAC are on at least their second round, and windows, water heater, fireplace and appliances are due or overdue. In North Texas the roof clock runs shorter than the shingle rating implies, because hail sets it rather than age.

None of that earns a premium — across 33,000 Fort Worth closings a new roof measured at essentially zero — but the absence costs real money, because a house that can't pass an appraisal has left the mortgage market. On the order of operations, what to fix before you list, and in what order has the sequence and what the sales say about each tier. If the work needs doing and the cash isn't sitting there, Compass Concierge covers it up front and is repaid at closing.

If you're selling in Grapevine

This is the strongest market I measure. Fifteen days to contract, 98.2% of original list, nearly four sales in ten spoken for within a week, and one of the lowest concession rates anywhere I cover. Values are flat to slightly up.

The first weekend is more decisive here than in any other market on this site, because almost 40% of this city's buyers commit inside it. A list price that needs a correction three weeks in has already missed most of its audience.

And if you're Carroll-zoned, make sure whoever prices your house knows it. Even at the conservative end, 11% on a $685,000 house is roughly $75,000, and it will not appear in any comparable set built from subdivision names.

Buying or selling in Grapevine

Fourteen hundred sales, two hundred and seventy subdivisions, one of the lowest tax rates and the fastest sales in the county, a school boundary worth eleven to fourteen percent, and a lake that turns out not to show up in the numbers the way everyone assumes.

What I can tell you is what the closed sales on houses your size, your vintage and your district actually support, how wide the range around that is, and what the property will cost every month once the assessment resets.

Browse active listings in this price range, or call or text (682) 207-4310, or send me a note.

Figures are medians and model results from NTREIS listings and closed sales in Grapevine for the three years ending September 2026, reported in aggregate. School attendance boundaries, tax rates, HOA dues and market conditions change — confirm current figures for a specific address before relying on them. Nothing here is an appraisal or a valuation of any particular property.