Hurst

Hurst sits between North Richland Hills and Bedford in northeast Tarrant County, on the Highway 10 and 183 corridor. It is the oldest of the Mid-Cities by build date — median build year 1969, with two-thirds of everything that sold built before 1980 — and it is the most affordable of the four.

Over the three years ending September 2026, Hurst produced 1,240 closed sales across 150 subdivisions. I'm a Texas broker and a Certified Residential Appraiser. What follows is what those sales show, starting with a number that looks better than it is.

Hurst appears to be rising. It isn't.

Run the ordinary analysis — all 1,240 sales, controlling for house size, lot size and build year — and values come back up 0.97% a year. In a region where much of Fort Worth is declining, that's a striking result, and it would be an easy thing to put in a headline.

It doesn't survive a second look.

Forty houses were carrying the entire result.

They sit in Adkins Park and Lonesome Dove Estates in the 76054 ZIP — a Toll Brothers development with a median close of $1,093,899 on 3,412 square feet, most of it built in the 2020s. In a city whose median sale is $347,300, forty closings at a million-plus over three years is enough to bend the whole city's trend line.

Strip them out and Hurst is flat. Not falling — which, given what's happening west of here, is genuinely good news for an owner. But flat is the honest word, and anyone telling you Hurst appreciated 1% a year is reading a statistic that describes one subdivision.

The same forty houses invented a school district premium

Hurst is split across three school districts: Hurst-Euless-Bedford ISD covers 866 of the sales, Birdville ISD 295, and Keller ISD 40.

Compare them naively and Keller-zoned Hurst looks extraordinary — a median of $1,093,899 against HEB's $316,000. Even controlling for house size, lot size and vintage, the model returns a Keller premium of +41.4%.

That number is not a school district effect and I won't present it as one. Those forty sales are the Toll Brothers development. A brand-new luxury enclave and a school boundary happen to occupy the same forty records, and no amount of controlling for square footage separates them when the sample is a single subdivision.

The real finding is smaller and more useful: Birdville ISD carries about +4.9% over HEB ISD in Hurst, on 291 sales, at p = 0.0001. That is in line with the school premiums I measure elsewhere in Tarrant County — Keller at +4.2% inside one Fort Worth ZIP, Northwest at +3.3% in another — and it's a number you can actually use.

Two ZIP codes, $135,000 apart

Hurst divides almost evenly, and the two halves are not the same market.

Twenty-two years of build date and nearly six hundred square feet separate the two halves of one small city. A per-foot average across Hurst describes neither of them — and since the ZIP line roughly tracks the school district line, getting it wrong compounds.

What it costs

• Median close $347,300 on 1,836 square feet — about $198 per foot
• Median lot 9,365 square feet; median build year 1969
• Median 20 days on market at 98.0% of original list
• Closed prices ran $129,200 to $1,682,884
• Effective property tax rate about 1.75%
• 18.1% had a pool; only 10.5% reported an HOA fee, median $300 where one exists

This is a fast market. 31.3% of sales go under contract within a week — the highest share of the four Mid-Cities and well above Fort Worth. Only 13.1% take more than three months.

The near-absence of HOAs is worth noting on its own. Nine houses in ten here carry no mandatory dues, against 37% with them in North Richland Hills. On a monthly-cost basis that is real money, and it rarely makes it into a comparison.

Age is worth more than the lot

Two things the model is clear about.

Build year matters a great deal: about 0.85% per year, at p < 0.0001. Across a city where the stock runs from the 1950s to 2025, that's a very large spread. A 1961 house in 76053 and a 1983 house in 76054 are roughly nineteen percent apart on vintage alone, before size, condition or district enter the picture.

Lot size barely registers. The correlation between lot size and price per foot is 0.056 — essentially nothing. Unlike Ridglea, where land carries the number, or North Richland Hills, where a handful of acreage parcels break the pattern, Hurst lots are uniform enough that they don't differentiate. What you're buying here is the house and the district.

One house in eight doesn't sell

Counted by listing, 24.8% of Hurst listings over three years came off the market without closing.

That figure double-counts. A house that lists, expires, relists and sells shows up as two failures and one success. Collapse the record by parcel instead, and the real rate is 12.8% — about one house in eight.

Still worth knowing, and roughly half what the listing count implies.

Sixty-year-old housing stock

With a median build year of 1969 and 847 of 1,240 sales built before 1980, the inspection conversation here is about era rather than wear.

• Supply lines. Galvanized pipe was standard in the 1950s stock that makes up much of 76053. It corrodes closed from the inside and shows up as falling water pressure. Many have been repiped; plenty haven't.
• The sewer line. Cast iron of this vintage deteriorates internally. A camera inspection costs a couple of hundred dollars and occasionally saves five figures.
• The electrical panel — brand and age, not just whether it works.
• Roof and HVAC. Both are on at least their second round at this age, and in North Texas hail sets the roof clock rather than the shingle rating.
• Foundation and drainage, on North Texas clay with sixty years of mature trees.

Build year tells you what is likely, not what is there. The point is knowing what to ask about, not assuming the worst.

What's worth fixing before you list

On sixty-year-old stock the order matters more than the budget. A Hurst house has to be financeable before anything cosmetic is worth spending on — roof, foundation, systems — and none of those earn a premium; they keep the house eligible for a mortgage and keep the buyer pool intact. Then the FHA and VA condition items an appraiser will call out anyway: peeling exterior paint, rotted wood, deferred maintenance. Only then does presentation money start working.

I tested fourteen common improvements against 33,000 closings in what to fix before you list, and in what order — three measured at zero, and the one that looked worst turned out not to mean what it appeared to.

If the work needs doing and the cash isn't sitting there, Compass Concierge covers pre-listing improvements up front and is repaid at closing. It solves the timing problem. Whether a given scope comes back to you is a separate question, and one worth answering before you commit rather than after.

How Hurst compares

Four adjacent cities on the same corridor, measured the same way over the same three years:

Hurst is the cheapest of the four at the median and the oldest by two decades. If you're weighing it against Bedford or North Richland Hills, you are largely trading build year for price — and given that vintage is worth about 0.85% a year here, that trade is more consequential than it looks. Of the four, only Euless shows a statistically significant decline. That is a meaningfully better picture than Fort Worth, where seventeen of thirty-six measurable ZIP codes are losing value — and Hurst is the cheapest entry point of the four.

What I look at in a Hurst house

• Which ZIP and which district. 76053 and 76054 are $135,000 apart at the median and the school boundary roughly follows them. Birdville is worth about 5% over HEB ISD.
• Build year against the comparable set. Roughly 0.85% per year, which across this city's range is the single largest adjustment.
• Whether a comparable came out of Adkins Park. That development is not the Hurst market and will distort any set it enters.
• Systems and era items, on a median 1969 house — see above.
• The tax figure on the listing, which is the seller's. Rates run about 1.75%, but a long-held homestead has a capped assessment that resets on sale.

If you're selling in Hurst

This is a functioning market and a quick one — twenty days to contract, 98% of original list, nearly a third of sales spoken for inside a week. Values are flat rather than falling, which in this region is a better position than most.

The two things that decide your number are your school district and your build year, and neither is visible in a per-foot average across the city. The third thing is making sure nobody prices your 1965 ranch against a million-dollar Toll Brothers house four minutes away because the spreadsheet says both are in Hurst.

Buying or selling in Hurst

Twelve hundred sales, a hundred and fifty subdivisions, three school districts, two ZIP codes $135,000 apart, and a citywide trend that turns out to be forty houses in one development.

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 Hurst 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.