DFW Housing Age by City:
What It Means for Your Pipes

Section 1: Median Construction Year, 7 DFW Cities

A home's age is one of the strongest predictors of what kind of supply-pipe material it was built with - and DFW's rapid, uneven growth means that predictor varies enormously from one city to the next, even between cities that sit a few miles apart. The U.S. Census Bureau's 2019-2023 American Community Survey (5-year estimates) reports a median construction year for each city's occupied housing stock:

A median construction year is the midpoint of a city's occupied housing stock - half the homes were built before that year, half after. It is not the "typical" build year of every home, and every city on this list still has a real mix of decades represented. Dallas and Arlington's older medians reflect large first-ring-suburb development that was substantially complete before 1990; Frisco, McKinney, and Allen's medians reflect the north-DFW growth boom that has run largely from the late 1990s through today.

Section 2: Why a Home's Age Predicts Its Pipe Material

U.S. residential supply-pipe material has moved through three broad eras, and which era a given DFW home falls into is driven almost entirely by when it was built:

• Galvanized steel (roughly pre-1960s-70s): The oldest surviving supply lines in DFW's pre-war and early postwar neighborhoods. Galvanized pipe corrodes and narrows from the inside over decades, which shows up as gradually worsening water pressure long before an outright failure.
• Polybutylene, or PB pipe (1978-1995): As covered in our Polybutylene Pipe in DFW guide, this gray plastic pipe was standard in a large share of new construction during exactly this 17-year window, largely because it was cheaper and faster to install than copper during DFW's fastest growth decades.
• Copper and, increasingly since the mid-1990s, PEX: Modern construction has moved toward copper and cross-linked polyethylene (PEX), both of which handle DFW's hard water and shifting clay soil far better than galvanized steel or polybutylene.

A city's median construction year is therefore a rough, city-level signal for how much of its housing stock statistically overlaps with the riskiest window - not a guarantee about any single house. A home built in 1985 in a city with a 1986 median is a plausible (though unconfirmed) polybutylene candidate; a home built in 2011 in a city with a 2009 median almost certainly is not, and is far more likely to be copper or PEX.

Section 3: What This Looks Like City by City

Dallas (1981) and Arlington (1986) have the oldest housing stock on this list. Their medians sit before and right at the start of the 1978-1995 polybutylene window, meaning both cities carry a meaningful share of homes old enough to have either galvanized steel or polybutylene supply lines - the age alone does not confirm which, or whether a given home was ever repiped since.

Plano (1993) and Fort Worth (1994) sit squarely inside the polybutylene era itself. A city median landing in this exact 17-year window is the single clearest statistical signal on this whole page: a large share of homes built around that median year in these two cities were built while PB pipe was still standard practice for many DFW-area builders.

Allen (2003), McKinney (2007), and Frisco (2009) have medians well past 1995, when polybutylene production stopped following the Cox v. Shell settlement. Homes built around these medians are far more likely to have copper or PEX supply lines - lower risk from pipe material alone, though DFW's hard water and expansive clay soil (see our DFW slab leaks guide) still apply to homes of any age.

Section 4: What to Do With This If You Own (or Are Buying) a DFW Home

This data tells you the odds for your city, not the facts for your specific address. If your home falls anywhere near or inside the 1978-1995 window - regardless of which city it's in - the only way to know for certain what pipe material you have is a visual inspection, which our guide above explains how to do yourself in a few minutes.

If you're buying an older DFW home, ask directly whether the property was built between 1978 and 1995 and whether the seller knows the supply-pipe material - Texas has no blanket legal requirement to disclose polybutylene pipe at sale. And regardless of a home's age, a sudden pipe failure doesn't wait for a convenient time; our 24/7 burst pipe emergency service covers the full DFW metro.