Southlake is the one city in my service area where a veteran regularly gets told “your loan will not go that high.” The Census puts the median owner-occupied home here at about $1,014,500, and the 2026 baseline conforming loan limit is $832,750. So the typical Southlake house sits roughly $182,000 above the limit.
That sounds like a wall. For most veterans it is not one at all. But whether it is depends entirely on one thing, and it is not the price of the house.
So a veteran with full entitlement can buy a $1.2 million house in Southlake with nothing down, assuming income supports the payment and the appraisal comes in. No jumbo product, no twenty percent, no mortgage insurance. The conforming loan limit is simply not part of that conversation.
Where it does become part of the conversation is if your entitlement is partially used — you already have a VA loan out on another house, or you had one that was never restored. Then the county loan limit enters the formula, and in Southlake it bites in a way it never would in Burleson or Crowley.
Run it. A veteran who has used $50,000 of entitlement has about $158,187.50 left, which supports roughly $632,750 with nothing down. In Keller that is a real budget. In Southlake, at a million-dollar median, it is not — so that buyer either restores entitlement, or brings 25 percent of the amount above the ceiling to closing.
That is a completely different conversation from “VA will not go that high,” and it is the reason I wrote a whole separate piece on it: using a VA loan above the conforming loan limit.
Here is the honest part. The VA has no limit, but lenders do. Plenty of them cap VA loans at a number of their own choosing, or require a down payment above some threshold, or simply do not have an appetite for a million-dollar zero-down VA file. That is an overlay, not a VA rule, and overlays vary enormously between lenders.
If a lender tells you no on a Southlake price point, the useful next question is “is that a VA rule or your rule?” and then call someone else. I have watched a buyer get three different answers from three lenders on the same file.
Most of Southlake is in Tarrant County. A portion sits in Denton County — Denton County lists Southlake among its cities and carries “Southlake, City” as a taxing entity on its own truth-in-taxation table.
Practical consequences, and they are not small:
“Southlake means Carroll ISD” is the single most repeated thing about this city, and it is not reliably true.
Carroll ISD’s own annual financial report says the district serves students in Southlake, Colleyville, Grapevine, Keller, Trophy Club and Westlake, across about 21 square miles of northeast Tarrant County. Meanwhile Keller ISD’s report lists Southlake among the cities it serves, and Northwest ISD names Southlake as one of the communities it partially serves.
So three districts have a claim on parts of this city. And since Carroll ISD describes itself as being in Tarrant County, a Southlake home on the Denton County side is probably not in Carroll ISD at all.
Here are the 2025 tax year rates per $100 of value for a Southlake home on the Tarrant County side:
| Taxing entity | Rate |
|---|---|
| Carroll ISD | 0.929400 |
| City of Southlake | 0.295000 |
| Tarrant County | 0.186200 |
| Tarrant County Hospital District | 0.165000 |
| Tarrant County College District | 0.112280 |
| Tarrant Regional Water District | 0.026500 |
| Combined | 1.714380 |
2025 tax year — the last complete adopted set. The 2026 cycle is already under way and two of these have changed: Tarrant County College adopted 0.120000 in September 2026, and Carroll ISD adopted 0.926900 in August 2026. Rates are set each August and September, so pull the current year before you build a payment on them.
About 1.71%. On a $1,014,500 home that is roughly $17,400 a year before any homestead exemption — about $1,450 a month sitting inside your payment before you have paid a dollar of principal.
Which is exactly why the next section matters more here than anywhere else I work.
Texas gives a veteran rated 100 percent — or rated individually unemployable and paid at the 100 percent rate — a total exemption on the appraised value of their residence homestead. Total. Not a discount.
At Southlake’s median home value that exemption is worth roughly $14,800 a year — about $1,230 a month that simply stops being part of the payment.
Approximate, and deliberately not just value times rate. Without the total exemption you would still hold the ordinary homestead exemptions — the $140,000 school district exemption and the local-option percentage exemptions several Tarrant County taxing units grant — so the total exemption is worth the tax you would otherwise have paid, not the tax on the full unexempted value. Your own figure depends on your appraised value and which exemptions your taxing units grant. Confirm with your appraisal district.
I do not know of another benefit in Texas real estate that moves a number like that. Full detail, including what the partial ratings are worth and how the two-appraisal-district problem plays out: what the disabled veteran exemption is worth in Tarrant County.
Southlake is small and it is owner-occupied to an unusual degree. About 31,175 people on the Census Bureau’s 2025 population estimate, and from the 2020–2024 American Community Survey, 9,229 households and 94.6 percent owner-occupied — against 83.5 percent in Keller. Average household size is 3.36 people, so the housing stock is built for larger families on larger lots.
There are about 1,151 veterans in Southlake. That is fewer than Keller’s 2,711, in a city with about 44 percent fewer households — Southlake is the smaller, higher-priced, less military-dense of the two.
One practical consequence of that 94.6 percent: there is very little to rent here. If you are PCS’ing in and your plan is to lease for a year while you learn the area, Southlake will frustrate you. Keller has more stock and a lower entry price.
Looking at Southlake with a VA loan? Send me the address you are considering and tell me whether your entitlement is full or partial. I will tell you which county the parcel is in, which school district actually serves it, what the tax number really looks like, and whether the price is inside your zero-down range. Those four answers change what you should be shopping for, and none of them are on the listing.
Ask me about a Southlake addressChecked September 2026. Texas tax rates are adopted each August and September and VA rules change — confirm current figures with your lender, the VA, or your appraisal district before you rely on them. I am a REALTOR, not a lender or a tax professional.
REALTOR® · BHHS PenFed Realty Texas
I help buyers and sellers across the Dallas–Fort Worth Metroplex — Fort Worth, Burleson, Crowley and Keller, and the surrounding Dallas area. I write these because they are the questions I answer on the phone every week, and most people never get a straight answer to them. If you have one I have not covered, ask me — I will probably turn it into the next post.