Residential Appraiser for Benbrook, Texas

Half the Market Was Built Before 1980

Across 918 closed sales over the three years to November 2026, the median Benbrook house that sold was built in 1979. 469 of them — 51.1% — predate 1980, and only 10.1% were built in 2015 or later.

That is close to the mirror image of the growth markets south of here. In Crowley, 63.0% of sales were built after 2015. Benbrook is an established, largely finished market inside Tarrant County, and the practical consequences run through everything below: the comparable set is older, more varied, and much less interchangeable than a new-build subdivision offers.

The lots are part of that. A median Benbrook lot is 9,670 square feet, about 0.22 acre, against 0.16 in Crowley. Older platting produced more ground per house, and in the pockets where that ground is largest the per-foot figures move sharply.

What “Benbrook” Contains

This is the finding that matters most on a Benbrook assignment, and it is a boundary problem rather than a market one.

A closed-sales search on City = Benbrook does not return one market. It returns four ZIP codes, and only 72.1% of the sales sit in 76126, the ZIP that carries the Benbrook name. The rest sit north and east in postal geography shared with Fort Worth.

Those are not variations on one housing type. The 76132 group sells at a median $487,180 on 2,447 square feet; the 76109 group is townhome stock at $197,500 on 1,068 square feet and a 3,616 square foot lot. Same city field, different products entirely.

Now hold the build era fixed. Every sale in the table below was built between 1970 and 1979.

Both ends of that $51 range fall outside 76126. The cheapest per foot, Pecan Valley, is entirely in 76116; the dearest, Mont Del Estates and Ridglea Country Club Estates, are in 76132 and split across 76116 and 76126. Restrict the same 1970s cohort to 76126 alone and the range narrows to $175 to $200 — a $25 spread rather than $51.

So two things are true at once, and they matter in opposite directions. Within the Benbrook ZIP the market is reasonably coherent: a $25 per-foot band across the big 1970s subdivisions. But a comparable search run on the city field alone reaches well past it, into housing that is older, larger, more expensive or townhome stock depending on which direction it wanders.

The practical consequence is that a per-foot rate pulled from “Benbrook, 1970s” without a geographic filter can be wrong by a third, and nothing in the city field, the build year or the square footage will flag it afterwards. The city name is the start of the search. The ZIP, the subdivision and the actual taxing jurisdiction finish it.

Three Years Without Movement

Three years, and the median rate per square foot has moved −1.4%. Net of seller concessions it has moved −1.0%. Sellers have been settling at a little over 97% of their original asking price in each of the three years without variation.

A flat market is worth stating plainly because it is not what most sellers assume, and because it changes what a retrospective valuation looks like. For an estate or a date-of-death assignment with an effective date one or two years back, the time adjustment in Benbrook over this period is close to zero — which is a conclusion that has to be demonstrated from the data rather than assumed in either direction.

The market-wide median sale was $332,750 at $186.85 per square foot, on 1,878 square feet and a median 30 days to contract. The tenth percentile sits at $235,000 and the ninetieth at $555,300.

Nearly Half of Sales Pay a Concession

46.2% of Benbrook sales closed with a seller-paid amount, at a median of $5,575, or 1.78% of the price. The share has drifted up over the three years — 43.8%, then 47.1%, then 47.4% — and the median amount when one is paid has risen from $5,300 to $6,000.

So the direction is real but the magnitude is moderate, and that is worth saying because it is very different from the new-build markets nearby. Crowley runs 79.3% on its post-2015 sales at a median 3.0% of price; Benbrook runs a little under half at a median 1.78%. Concessions here are a negotiating item on individual sales rather than a structural feature of how the inventory is sold.

It still belongs in the grid. On a typical Benbrook sale the recorded price overstates what the seller netted by something under two percent, and on the 46% that carry one it is a real adjustment rather than a rounding error. The full treatment is in what the sticker price hides.

New Construction Is a Tenth of the Market and Sits Three Times Longer

Read down the rate column and the gradient runs the ordinary way for once: the newest houses carry the highest rate per foot, $223 against $165 for the 1950s stock. That is the opposite of Crowley and Burleson, where the newest cohorts are the cheapest per foot, and the reason is that Benbrook has not had enough new construction to reset its own rate structure.

Read the days column instead and the picture changes. The 1950s houses go under contract in a median 22 days. The 2020s houses take 68, and 57.6% of them need a concession to close against 32.9% for the 2010s cohort. With 33 sales this is a small sample and should be treated as an indication rather than a measurement, but the direction matches what the larger new-build markets south of here show much more clearly.

For an estate or a divorce where a reasonable exposure time belongs in the report, the figure for the relevant build era is the one to use. The market-wide median of 30 days describes the older stock that makes up most of the sales, not a house finished in 2022.

What the MLS Record Gets Wrong Here

Three years of Benbrook data contains a number of entries that cannot be true, and they matter because they sit in exactly the fields an automated valuation or a hurried grid would average without looking.

Eight sales carry a seller concession of 15% or more of the price, six of them at essentially 100% — a $960,000 concession recorded against a $960,000 sale, a $675,000 against a $675,000. Those are sale prices typed into the concessions box. Averaging the field as it stands makes the mean concession appear to triple over two years; removing eight records out of 926 leaves the modest upward drift described above. One listing is geocoded to latitude 37.47, which is in Kansas, instead of 32.47.

And 29.2% of all Benbrook listings over the period ended cancelled or expired rather than closing. A comparable set drawn only from closings describes the houses that sold, not the market that buyers faced, and in a flat market that distinction does real work.

None of this is unusual, and none of it is a criticism of the agents involved. It is the ordinary condition of market data, and it is the reason an opinion of value is developed by reading the records rather than by averaging them. More on checking the person doing that reading is in how to check who is appraising your house.

What This Means for Your Assignment

If this is an estate or a date-of-death valuation, two things matter. The market has been flat for three years, so a retrospective effective date one or two years back needs very little time adjustment — but that has to be shown rather than assumed. And the comparable set has to be filtered past the city field, because a 1970s search on “Benbrook” alone spans a $51 per-foot range across four ZIP codes.

If this is a divorce, the housing is old enough that condition and updating vary enormously between two otherwise identical houses, and the MLS record describes neither well. What was done to a 1972 house in the last decade is usually the largest single difference between it and its neighbour, and it has to be observed.

If this is a tax protest, this is a market where mass appraisal struggles, which is the opposite of the new-build subdivisions. Lot size differences are large, build eras are mixed within short distances, and the pockets with the biggest lots carry rate structures of their own. Those are the arguments an individually developed opinion can isolate.

If you are selling, two numbers are worth knowing. Sellers here have settled at about 97% of their original asking price in each of the last three years, and 29.2% of listings over the period never closed at all. Pricing against your own ZIP and subdivision rather than against “Benbrook” generally is most of the difference between those two outcomes.