5 North Texas Real Estate Myths That Are Costing Buyers and Sellers Real Money
There is no shortage of real estate advice floating around the internet, at dinner tables and in conversations with well-meaning friends who bought a house once and now consider themselves experts. Some of that advice is fine. Some of it is genuinely costing people money. Here are five of the most persistent myths I hear in this market and the honest truth behind each one.
Myth 1: You Can Time the Real Estate Market
This one comes up in almost every buyer and seller conversation at some point. Should I wait for rates to drop? Is the market about to correct? Should I sell now or hold out for a better spring? Everyone wants to know the perfect moment.
Here is the honest answer: no one can time the real estate market consistently. Not professional investors, not economists, not agents who have been doing this for decades.
The buyers who sat out 2020 waiting for a correction watched prices climb for three years before they bought at a higher price point than the one they passed on. The sellers who waited for just a little more appreciation in 2022 watched the market soften and left money on the table they thought was already theirs. In both cases the people waiting for the perfect moment ended up worse off than the people who made a decision based on their actual life circumstances.
The right time to buy is when you are financially ready and your life calls for it. The right time to sell is when your equity position is strong and your next move is clear. Those are the variables you can actually control. Market timing is not.
The cost of waiting is also real even when it is invisible. Every month you wait to buy is a month of rent paid toward someone else's equity. Every month you wait to sell is a month of carrying costs on a home you have already decided to leave. The market will always be imperfect. Your life does not wait for perfect.
Myth 2: You Need 20% Down to Buy a Home
This is one of the most persistent myths in residential real estate and it is keeping a significant number of qualified buyers on the sidelines longer than they need to be.
The 20% figure comes from a real place — putting 20% down eliminates the requirement for private mortgage insurance (PMI) and gives you immediate equity in the home. Those are genuine advantages. But treating 20% as a prerequisite rather than an option leads buyers to delay purchases by years while they save toward a number that is not actually required.
The reality is that there are multiple loan programs that allow buyers to purchase with significantly less than 20% down. FHA loans allow as little as 3.5% down for buyers who meet the credit requirements. Conventional loans are available with as little as 3% down through certain programs. VA loans, available to qualifying veterans and active military, often require zero down payment. USDA loans for eligible rural and suburban areas can also offer zero down options.
The trade-off is real: lower down payment typically means PMI until you reach 20% equity and a higher overall loan amount which increases your monthly payment. Those are genuine costs worth understanding. But for many buyers the monthly cost difference between a 3.5% down FHA loan and continuing to rent — while also building equity — is smaller than they expect.
If you have been telling yourself you cannot buy because you do not have 20% saved, have a conversation with a lender before you make that assumption. Randy Watkins at Miramar Mortgage is someone I trust to walk buyers through the actual options for their specific financial picture without pressure and without oversimplification. The number you need to get into a home may be meaningfully lower than you think.
Myth 3: Selling Without a Realtor Will Save You Money
The logic seems straightforward: skip the commission and keep more money. And in a market where homes are selling quickly and buyers are everywhere, it is tempting to conclude that a Realtor is an unnecessary expense rather than a necessary service.
The data tells a different story. Research from the National Association of Realtors consistently shows that homes sold by owners — what the industry calls FSBO, or For Sale By Owner — sell for significantly less than agent-represented homes. The gap in sale price typically far exceeds the commission that would have been paid. In other words, sellers who try to save the commission often end up netting less money, not more, even after accounting for what they did not pay in fees.
Why does this happen? Several reasons. Pricing is the most important. Sellers who price their own homes are working without access to the full comparable sales data that agents use and without the experience to interpret that data accurately. Overpriced homes sit. Underpriced homes leave money on the table. Both outcomes cost the seller more than a commission would have.
Marketing reach is the second reason. Agent-represented listings go into the MLS with professional photography, syndication to every major real estate platform and exposure to the full pool of active buyers and their agents. FSBO listings reach a fraction of that audience.
Negotiation is the third. The transaction process — from offer through option period through inspection negotiations through closing — involves multiple points where an experienced agent protects the seller's interest in ways that are not obvious until something goes wrong. And something almost always comes up.
I am obviously not a neutral party on this topic and I will not pretend otherwise. But the data is the data and the sellers I have worked with who previously tried FSBO consistently tell me the experience was more complicated and the result was less than they expected. The National Association of Realtors research on this is publicly available if you want to review it yourself.
Myth 4: You Need Perfect Credit to Get a Mortgage
This myth keeps buyers who are ready in almost every other way from even starting the conversation with a lender. They look at their credit score, decide it is not good enough and put homeownership on hold indefinitely while they work toward a number that may already be sufficient.
The credit score threshold for mortgage qualification is lower than most people assume. FHA loans are available to buyers with scores as low as 580 with 3.5% down and in some cases to buyers with scores as low as 500 with a larger down payment. Conventional loans generally require higher scores but the threshold is not the 750 or 800 that buyers often assume sets the bar.
What credit score does affect significantly is the interest rate you qualify for. A buyer with a 620 score will pay a higher rate than a buyer with a 760 score on an otherwise identical loan. That difference in rate translates to a real difference in monthly payment and total interest paid over the life of the loan. Improving your credit score before you apply — even by a moderate amount — can meaningfully reduce your borrowing cost. But improving it does not necessarily mean waiting until it is perfect.
The other thing credit score does not tell you alone is the full picture of your qualification. Lenders look at your complete financial profile: income, employment history, debt-to-income ratio and reserves in addition to credit score. A buyer with a modest credit score and strong income, stable employment and low existing debt may qualify more easily than they expect. A buyer with a strong credit score and high existing debt may face more friction than they anticipated.
The only way to know where you actually stand is to talk to a lender and get a real pre-approval rather than a ballpark estimate based on assumptions. Again, Randy Watkins at Miramar Mortgage is someone I trust to give buyers a straight answer on this — what they qualify for today, what would change if they improved certain things and what a realistic path to purchase looks like for their specific situation.
Myth 5: Spring Is Always the Best Time to Sell
Every year the same advice circulates: list in spring, that is when buyers are out, that is when you will get your best price. And while spring is genuinely active in the North Texas market — more listings, more showings, more buyer activity — the idea that spring is universally the best time to sell deserves a closer look.
Here is what the "list in spring" advice gets wrong. It treats buyer activity as the only variable. It ignores seller competition. When every seller in your market has heard the same advice and acts on it simultaneously, the spring surge in listings means your home is competing against significantly more inventory than it would in other seasons. More supply with similar demand does not automatically produce better outcomes for sellers.
The buyers who are active outside of spring are often more motivated buyers. A buyer searching for a home in July or November is not casually browsing. They have a reason to move — a job relocation, a lease ending, a life change that does not follow the seasonal calendar. Motivated buyers tend to make cleaner offers with fewer contingencies and less negotiation posturing than buyers who know they have twenty other options to look at over the next three months.
In North Texas specifically, the summer heat also serves as a natural filter. Buyers who are out touring homes in July are serious. They are not doing Saturday afternoon showings for entertainment. That seriousness translates into offer quality in ways that spring activity does not always replicate.
This does not mean spring is a bad time to sell. If your home is ready and spring is when your life calls for it, list in spring. But if you have been holding your home off the market waiting for the spring window and your circumstances are pointing toward a fall or winter listing, do not assume you are making a sacrifice. The data on seasonal performance in North Texas is more nuanced than the conventional wisdom suggests and a well-priced, well-prepared home can perform strongly in any season.
The most expensive real estate decisions are almost always the ones made on assumptions that were never tested against the actual facts. Every one of these myths has cost buyers and sellers in this market real money — through delayed purchases, underpriced listings, missed opportunities and choices based on what everyone knows rather than what is actually true.
If any of these myths have been part of your thinking and you want to work through what the real picture looks like for your specific situation, let's have that conversation. I would rather spend an hour getting you the right information now than watch you make a decision in six months based on something that was never accurate to begin with.
