Does it feel like it’s getting harder to find a house for an affordable price? Your eyes are not deceiving you. The Lone Star State has more cities with “overpriced” housing markets than any other state, and nearly half of them are in South Texas, according to MoneyLion, a mobile banking and finance site.
In its new ranking, “50 Places with the Most Overpriced Homes,” MoneyLion used the latest housing data from Zillow to analyze 200 large cities across the United States. From there, the finance site identified the cities with the most overpriced markets, where the discrepancy between list prices and home valuations was largest.
While cities in states with hot — and pricey — real estate markets like California and Florida made the list, no state had more overpriced cities than Texas. Of the 50 cities MoneyLion ranked, 11 are in the Lone Star State, followed by Florida with six. Of those, Corpus Christi, Brownsville and McAllen were in the top 10.
Corpus Christi, which is currently staring down an impending water scarcity crisis, ranked the third-most overpriced city in the country. An average single-family home in the Coastal Bend’s biggest city is valued at around $220,500, but the median price of homes listed for sale is nearly $100,000 higher at $318,666. That represents a 44.5% discrepancy between list prices and home valuations.
Next up is Brownsville, which is currently experiencing an industrial development boom thanks to companies like SpaceX, the oil and liquefied natural gas industries and several technology companies. The Rio Grande Valley’s largest and oldest city ranked fourth-most overpriced in the country, with a nearly $78,000 discrepancy between list prices and home valuations. The average home value in the city “on the border, by the sea” is just under $200,000, but the average list price is $277,000 — a 19.1% discrepancy, according to MoneyLion.
Just 60 miles west, McAllen also has an overpriced housing market. While the average home value in the Valley’s second-largest city is about $194,000, homes for sale are listed about $66,000 higher than local valuations. That means, on average, homes in McAllen are listed at about $260,000 — a 33.9% gap. Further up the border, Laredo homes are listed at prices that are about 17% higher than the average home value of $217,253.
Of the seven other Texas cities that made MoneyLion’s top 50 ranking, only one is among the state’s biggest cities — San Antonio. Neither Houston, Dallas/Fort Worth, nor Austin made MoneyLion’s ranking. But San Antonio clocked in as the city with the 47th-most overpriced housing market in the country. On average, homes in the Alamo City are listed for sale at about $327,000. That’s $46,400 more than the average home value of $280,695 — a disparity of 16.5%.