More homes are on the market in Houston than at any point HAR has ever measured. Call (832) 207-3277 and we will tell you what that is worth on the specific house you are watching.
The Agency Team, 1111 N. Loop W. Suite 860, Houston TX 77008. Broker Waldina Galeano, TREC #665052. More than 50 agents and over 1,000 Houston families served each year.
Houston recorded 40,750 active single family listings in July 2026, up 3.4% year over year and the highest count HAR has ever logged. Months of inventory reached 5.5, which by the conventional reading is a balanced market rather than the seller market Houston ran for most of the last decade. Prices did not fall to produce that: the median rose 0.6% to $340,000 and the average rose 1.9% to about $441,000, on 8,340 sales, itself up 1.6%.
That combination is the whole story for anyone buying here right now. Demand is intact, supply caught up, and the pressure that used to force same day decisions is gone. Homes sat an average of 53 days against 50 a year ago. A buyer today can ask for repairs, ask for closing cost help, and walk away from a house that does not survive inspection, none of which was realistic in 2021.
It also means a seller who prices off last year is going to sit. With that many competing listings, the first two weeks decide the outcome, and a price correction made in week six costs more than the correct price would have in week one. We price against what is actually active in the same submarket and the same price band, not against a citywide median that blends a Third Ward bungalow with a Memorial estate.
Buyers ask me whether the market is up or down and it is the wrong question for Houston, because there is no single Houston market. What actually changes the number on the page is the tax entity stack, the deed restrictions, and now the draft flood maps, and all three are address specific. I have watched two houses four streets apart carry a four hundred dollar a month difference in payment on the same purchase price. That is the conversation I want to have before we tour anything. Waldina Galeano, Broker and CEO, The Agency Team
TREC Broker License #665052
Houston is the largest city in the United States without conventional zoning. Voters rejected it in 1948, 1962 and 1993, and nothing has replaced it since. What controls land use instead is a combination of private deed restrictions, the dimensional standards in Chapter 42 of the city code, and a patchwork of special districts.
For a buyer this is not trivia, it is the single biggest difference between buying here and buying in almost any other major metro. The vacant lot beside a house is not protected by a residential zoning designation, because there is no such designation. What protects it, when anything does, is a recorded deed restriction, and those vary block by block, expire on their own schedules, and are enforced by civic associations with wildly different levels of energy.
The practical rule is that a title search in Houston is the zoning check. We read the recorded restrictions for the specific subdivision before an offer goes out, confirm whether they are current or lapsed, and tell you what can legally be built next door. A buyer who skips that step in Houston is making an assumption that the law does not support.
FEMA released draft floodplain maps for Harris County in February 2026 through the MAAPnext program, the first comprehensive update in close to twenty years. They fold in Atlas 14 rainfall data, LiDAR elevation, and the drainage work built since Hurricane Harvey. A Houston Chronicle analysis of the drafts found more than 420,000 properties could shift into a higher risk classification, with roughly 170,000 landing inside the 100 year floodplain that are not in it today.
The timing is what buyers need to understand. These are draft maps. They are not open for formal appeal, they cannot be used to rate an insurance policy, and the effective maps are estimated for 2028 to 2029. So a house can be outside the mapped floodplain today, priced and insured accordingly, and appear inside it on a map that becomes binding a couple of years into your ownership.
Nothing about that makes a property a bad buy. It makes it a property you should price with the future map in front of you. We pull the address on the Harris County Flood Control District MAAPnext viewer alongside the current effective FEMA map, and where the two disagree we get a flood insurance quote under both before anyone signs. Some of the news is good, incidentally: parts of the county come out at lower risk than they carry today.
There is no single Houston property tax rate, and any figure quoted as one is wrong. Your bill is the sum of rates set independently by the City of Houston, Harris County, your school district, a community college district, and whatever special purpose districts your address sits in. Harris County itself, including flood control, the hospital district and the Port of Houston Authority, ran a combined $0.6241 per $100 of valuation. Houston ISD alone was near $0.88 per $100 for tax year 2025.
Texas collects no state income tax, which is why the property tax carries the load, and it is the number that decides whether a mortgage payment works. Two houses at the same price in different parts of the city can differ by several hundred dollars a month once the district stack is added up.
The offset is the homestead exemption, and it grew. Voters approved raising the school district homestead exemption to $140,000 in November 2025, up from $100,000. Harris County adds an optional 20% homestead exemption on its own portion. On a $400,000 home that is another $80,000 off the taxable value for county purposes. We pull the full entity by entity breakdown from the appraisal district for the specific address before you write an offer, and we confirm the exemption actually got filed, because it does not transfer automatically from the previous owner.
Houston ISD has been governed by a state appointed Board of Managers since June 2023, not an elected board. In 2025 the Texas Education Commissioner extended that intervention to June 1, 2027, and the district has to clear three exit criteria before an elected board returns: no campus academically unacceptable across multiple years, special education operations in compliance, and the performance goals met.
Families buying inside HISD boundaries ask us what this means for their kids, and the honest answer is that it varies enormously by campus rather than resolving into one verdict about the district. HISD is large enough that a district level rating tells you close to nothing about the specific elementary school four blocks from the house you are considering.
Worth knowing too: a Houston mailing address does not guarantee HISD. Parts of the city fall inside Alief, Aldine, Spring Branch, Cypress Fairbanks, Klein and others, and the boundaries do not follow city limits. We confirm the zoned campus, elementary through high school, from the district boundary tool for the exact address rather than from the listing, where the school fields are entered by hand and are wrong often enough to matter.
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For a buyer, this is the strongest position in several years. Active listings hit 40,750 in July 2026, the highest HAR has ever recorded, and months of inventory reached 5.5, which is a balanced market rather than a seller market. Prices did not collapse to get there, the median still rose 0.6% year over year to $340,000, so this is leverage without a falling asset. Practically it means room to negotiate repairs and closing costs, and time to get an inspection done properly.
The median single family sale price was $340,000 in July 2026, up 0.6% from a year earlier, with the average at about $441,000. The gap between those two numbers is the luxury segment pulling the average up. Neither figure tells you much about a specific street, since Houston spans everything from sub $200,000 resale to multi million dollar Memorial and River Oaks property under one city name. Ask for comps inside your submarket and price band.
Correct, and it is the largest US city without conventional zoning. Voters rejected zoning in 1948, 1962 and 1993. Land use is instead controlled by private deed restrictions, the dimensional standards in Chapter 42 of the city code, and various special districts. For a buyer that means the protection you would get from residential zoning elsewhere comes from a recorded deed restriction here, so the title search is the zoning check. Restrictions vary by subdivision and some have lapsed.
FEMA released draft MAAPnext maps for Harris County in February 2026, the first full update in about twenty years. A Houston Chronicle analysis found more than 420,000 properties could move into a higher risk category and roughly 170,000 into the 100 year floodplain. They are draft only, cannot be used to rate insurance yet, and effective maps are estimated for 2028 to 2029. Check the address against both the current effective map and the MAAPnext viewer, and get a quote under both.
There is no single rate. The bill is the sum of the City of Houston, Harris County, the school district, a community college district and any special purpose districts covering the address. Harris County combined, including flood control, hospital and port, ran $0.6241 per $100 of valuation, and Houston ISD alone was near $0.88 per $100 for tax year 2025. The school district homestead exemption rose to $140,000 for 2025 to 2026 after voters approved it, and Harris County adds an optional 20% exemption on its portion.
No. Parts of the city are zoned to Alief, Aldine, Spring Branch, Cypress Fairbanks, Klein and other districts, and those boundaries do not follow city limits. Some Houston mailing addresses sit outside the city limits entirely, in unincorporated Harris County, which changes the tax bill and the permitting authority as well. Confirm the zoned campus from the district boundary tool for the exact address. Listing school fields are entered by hand and are wrong often enough to matter.
Market figures: HAR monthly MLS housing update and Greater Houston Partnership home sales data and Harris County Flood Control District, MAAPnext and Houston Public Media on the draft FEMA maps and Houston Chronicle on why Houston has no zoning and Texas Education Agency on the HISD intervention extension and Harris Central Appraisal District . Figures move monthly. Call for the current read on your street.
Give us the address you are watching and we will come back with the full tax entity breakdown, the recorded deed restrictions, the zoned campuses, and where it falls on both the current and the draft flood maps. Before you make an offer, not after.