Houston Housing: What Homes and Rentals Cost, and Where to Start

What Houston Homes Sold For in June 2026

Source: Houston Association of REALTORS, June 2026 market report. Geography basis: HAR MLS service area (Greater Houston).

Read the median, not the average. The two single-family figures above describe the same month and the same geography, and the average sits well above the median, which is the signature of a distribution where a smaller number of high-value sales pull the mean upward. The median is the better answer to "what does a house here cost", and at $345,000 it barely moved against the same month a year earlier. The one segment visibly softening is townhomes and condominiums, whose median fell 6.5% year over year while single-family prices held.

Volume rose while prices sat still. 8,820 single-family homes changed hands, up 3.5%, and 10,181 properties of all types sold, up 2.6%. A market that transacts more without repricing is one where buyers and sellers are meeting on terms both can live with, rather than one side setting them.

Why Two "Houston Medians" Can Differ by Tens of Thousands

Houston figures circulate widely and disagree with each other, and almost every disagreement traces to one of three things rather than to anyone being wrong. Check all three before you set two numbers side by side.

1. Geography basis. "Houston" can mean the city limits, Harris County, the HAR MLS service area, or the nine-county metropolitan statistical area. Those are four different populations of homes. The figures on this page are the HAR service area, and we label them that way every time.
2. Time basis. A single-month median and a twelve-month rolling average of the median are different statistics that happen to share a name. A rolling figure smooths a year of data into one number and will lag a single-month reading, sometimes by a wide margin. Comparing one to the other produces a difference that means nothing at all.
3. Measure basis. Median and average answer different questions, as the $345,000 and $455,159 pair above demonstrates. Neither is wrong; they simply are not interchangeable.

If a Houston figure you find elsewhere does not state its geography, its period and whether it is a median or an average, you cannot check it and neither can we. That is the standard this page holds itself to.

Renting in Houston: Read the Label on the Number

Source: Houston Association of REALTORS, June 2026 rental report. Geography basis: HAR MLS service area (Greater Houston). Measure basis: mean, not median. Days on market shown as June 2025 to June 2026.

What this page does not publish: a Houston apartment rent. We could not source a median or a one-bedroom apartment figure for Houston from a primary authority with the geography and measure stated, so we carry none. An unlabelled rent number is easy to write and impossible to check, and this page would rather be short than confidently wrong.

What the leasing data does tell you is about supply. Both segments took longer to lease than they did a year earlier, and both saw substantially more leases signed. More listings sitting longer is the shape of a market where a tenant can view several properties, take a day to think, and ask for something in the negotiation. If you are renting first while you learn the metro, that is the position you are renting into.

5.2 Months of Inventory: What It Means When You Make an Offer

Months of inventory is the standard way a housing market describes its own balance: how long it would take to sell every home currently listed at the pace homes are actually selling. It is a supply measure, not a price forecast, and it is the single most useful number on this page for deciding how to write an offer.

Greater Houston carried 5.2 months of inventory in June 2026. Practically, that is a market with genuine choice on the buyer side and no urgency premium built into the process. It usually means you can take an option period and actually use it, order a full inspection rather than waiving one, ask for repairs found in that inspection, and walk away from a property that does not survive diligence without feeling that you have lost your only chance.

It also means you should not expect a specific home to be a bargain simply because the metro is balanced. Inventory is a metro-wide average across a very large service area. Individual submarkets, price bands and school attendance zones can be far tighter or far looser than the headline, which is why the neighborhood work below matters more than the metro number.

Property Tax: There Is No Single Houston Rate

This is the item that most reliably surprises people arriving from a state with income tax. Texas has none, and property tax carries a correspondingly larger share of the load. The part relocators get wrong is not the size of the bill but its structure.

No Texas county publishes a single combined property-tax rate. Your bill is the sum of independently governed taxing units that happen to overlap at your address: the county, the school district, possibly a city, and often a hospital district, a flood control district, a community college district and a municipal utility district. Each sets its own rate on its own schedule. That makes a combined rate address-dependent, never a county constant. For scale, Harris County's own 2025 levy is $0.380960 per $100 of taxable value, which is a fraction of what a typical Houston homeowner pays in total. The rest comes from the other units at that specific address. Any "combined rate" you see quoted for Houston, including on this site, is representative rather than official.

The homestead exemption is $140,000 and it applies to the school-district portion only. Texas raised the school-district residence homestead exemption to $140,000 under SB 4 (2025), per the Texas Comptroller. It is not a discount on your whole tax bill. It reduces the taxable value used by your school district, so what it actually saves you depends on that district's own rate, and it does nothing to the county, hospital, college or utility-district lines. It also is not automatic: you file it with your county appraisal district, the standard deadline is April 30, and Texas allows late filing up to two years with back credits. Once a homestead exemption is in place, the annual increase in the home's appraised value is capped at 10%, which is why a long-tenured neighbor's bill can be far below yours on an identical house.

Practical rule: never budget a Houston purchase from a county average. Pull the actual tax bill for the actual address, look at which taxing units appear on it, and ask specifically whether the property sits inside a municipal utility district. Full breakdown in our Texas property tax guide.

Flood Risk Is the Houston-Specific Diligence Step

Every metro has a local diligence item that outsiders skip. In Houston it is water. Flat terrain, heavy rainfall and decades of development interact in ways that are specific to an address rather than to a neighborhood, and two houses on the same street can carry different risk and different insurance costs.

• Look up the exact address on the FEMA Flood Map Service Center before you make an offer, not after you are under contract.
• Ask the seller directly, in writing, whether the property has ever flooded and whether an insurance claim has been filed on it. Texas sellers complete a disclosure form; read the flooding section closely rather than skimming it.
• Get a flood insurance quote for the specific address while you can still change your mind. Mapped high-risk zones typically require coverage for a mortgaged property, and the premium belongs in your monthly number from the beginning.
• Do not treat "outside the high-risk zone" as "will not flood". Maps describe modelled risk on a given revision date, and drainage around a property can change.

Our Houston flood zone guide covers how to read the map result and what it changes about the purchase.

Where to Start Looking: Houston Submarkets by Character

Greater Houston is geographically enormous, and the difference between a good and a miserable first year is usually the match between where you live and how you actually spend a weekday. The groupings below describe character and fit rather than price, because a price band quoted for a submarket goes stale far faster than its character does.

• Inside the Loop. Montrose, the Heights, Midtown, Rice Military and the Museum District. The oldest housing stock in the metro, the most walkable pockets, the smallest lots, and the shortest drives to both downtown and the Medical Center. The trade is space and, in places, school-district fit.
• Texas Medical Center and surrounds. Built for the largest medical complex in the world. Clinical staff, residents, researchers and long-stay patient families concentrate here specifically to keep the commute measured in minutes.
• Energy Corridor and Katy. West-side energy employers, master-planned suburbs, newer construction and larger lots. Many of these subdivisions sit inside municipal utility districts, which is an additional taxing unit on the bill.
• Sugar Land and Missouri City. Fort Bend County. Established, family-oriented, heavy demand driven by schools, and tax bills that vary sharply depending on which units overlap the address.
• The Woodlands and Spring. North-side corporate campuses inside a heavily wooded master-planned community. Excellent internally; the longest of these commutes if your office is downtown.
• Clear Lake and League City. Aerospace and Bay Area employers, boating, and a distinctly separate local identity from central Houston.
• Pearland and Alvin. South side, newer construction, and a comparatively straightforward run into the Medical Center.

Compare them properly in our Houston neighborhood guide and Houston suburb comparison, and check district and campus fit in the Houston school guide before you shortlist anywhere.

How to Approach a Houston Move Without Guessing

Short-Term and Furnished Options While You Decide

Everything above assumes you are choosing where to live in Houston. If you need somewhere to live while you make that choice, a furnished short-term rental is the usual bridge: it lets you spend the first month inside a submarket before committing a year or a mortgage to it.