People bike along a path in Sunterra, a community of 7,000 homes in the Katy area, Wednesday, April 15, 2026.
Jason Fochtman/Houston Chronicle
A home recently sold is seen in the Lakeview subdivision, Wednesday, April 15, 2026, in Waller County.
Jason Fochtman/Houston Chronicle
Homes are seen in Sunterra, a community of 7,000 homes in the Katy area, Wednesday, April 15, 2026.
Jason Fochtman/Houston Chronicle
People run along a path in Sunterra, a community of 7,000 homes in the Katy area, Wednesday, April 15, 2026.
Jason Fochtman/Houston Chronicle
A home under construction is available to purchase in the Lakeview subdivision, Wednesday, April 15, 2026, in Waller County.
Jason Fochtman/Houston Chronicle
Homes are seen in Sunterra, a community of 7,000 homes in the Katy area, Wednesday, April 15, 2026.
Jason Fochtman/Houston Chronicle
A home under construction is seen in the Lakeview subdivision, Wednesday, April 15, 2026, in Waller County.
Jason Fochtman/Houston Chronicle
Homes are seen in the Lakeview subdivision, Wednesday, April 15, 2026, in Waller County.
Jason Fochtman/Houston Chronicle
Homes are seen in Lakeview, Wednesday, April 15, 2026, in Waller County.
Jason Fochtman/Houston Chronicle
A drainage ditch utilizing culverts runs along homes in the Lakeview subdivision, Wednesday, April 15, 2026, in Waller County.
Jason Fochtman/Houston Chronicle
Traffic drives through Waller, Tuesday, March 18, 2025.
Jon Shapley/Houston Chronicle
The Waller County Sheriff’s Office is shown at the Waller County Justice Center in Hempstead Wednesday, Jan. 7, 2026.
Melissa Phillip/Houston Chronicle
The Waller County Justice Center in Hempstead is shown Wednesday, Jan. 7, 2026.
Melissa Phillip/Houston Chronicle
The Waller County Courthouse Annex is shown at the Waller County Justice Center in Hempstead Wednesday, Jan. 7, 2026.
Melissa Phillip/Houston Chronicle
In some places, 3,800 people barely counts as a crowd. That’s about a tenth of the capacity at Daikin Park, and roughly 3% of the average daily attendance at the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo this year.
But in Waller County, one of the Houston area’s more rural outposts, adding roughly 3,800 people in just a year creates a seismic shock. It caused the county to grow by about 5.7% last year, the second-highest rate of any county in the United States.
Residents feel the difference. New subdivisions seem to appear daily amid the rice fields and cow pastures that once dominated the county’s bucolic landscape, and county leaders are racing to keep services at pace with the growth.
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And unlike other parts of the Houston area, the growth in Waller County doesn’t look to be slowing anytime soon.
“We’ve been fighting to keep up,” said Waller County Judge Trey Duhon. “It keeps us busy. It’s no easy task to stay up to speed with this level of growth.”
Industry drives growth
Waller County has remained a predominantly rural county even as the Houston area has grown into a booming metropolis of nearly 8 million people.
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For much of its history, the county’s economy revolved around rice and cattle, and it maintained a population of fewer than 50,000 people as recently as 2015.
Ten years later, Waller County’s population has ballooned to nearly 70,000 people, a 44% increase.
“(The draw) is the country life that was out here before,” said Sheriff Troy Guidry, who has lived in Waller County since 2005. “It used to be you’d go for a good couple of miles without seeing a car, now you’re sitting behind four of them.”
Ken Ellis/Houston Chronicle
Waller County officials say numerous causes have fueled the county’s explosion. Its proximity to Houston and its abundance of cheap, available land are fairly obvious, considering the Houston metropolitan area leads the nation in growth.
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But other indicators signal that some aspects of Waller County’s growth may be unique. Among the 10 counties that make up the greater Houston area, Waller was the only one whose growth did not slow down between 2024 and 2025.
That’s because some larger counties, like Harris and Fort Bend, rely heavily on international migration for their growth, and new entries into the country have slowed to a crawl under President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown.
MAP: See which Texas counties had the most population growth in 2025
Meanwhile, domestic migration — or the movement of people within the United States — stagnated or declined in most Houston area counties, signaling a reluctance among Americans to relocate during uncertain economic times.
Domestic migration to Waller County, though, increased by over 300% between 2024 and 2025, driving almost all the county’s growth.
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Duhon said that the wealth of new homes in the area appeals to people who want “a bit more elbow room” at a more affordable price point than they can get in the city. But one of the main drivers of Waller County’s growth, he said, is the introduction of big business into the area.
The Igloo Factory on Interstate 10, which opened in 2004, may be the most recognizable of the county’s major industrial facilities — at least for those who regularly commute west past Katy.
But in recent years, a growing number of large international companies have positioned their U.S. headquarters in Waller County as well, including Everllence, a German engine-building company, and the Danish pump manufacturer Grundfos.
Such facilities require thousands of employees to keep things moving, and those employees require housing.
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“With all the commercial and industrial (activity) in the area, we have a lot of employment opportunities, so you have some people coming to Texas from out of state seeking a new opportunity,” Duhon said. “But I also talk to a lot of people that are coming from the Houston area moving out, whether it’s for the school districts or just what they perceive as a higher quality of life, a little bit slower and not quite as crazy.”
Sprawling developments
Greg Roland was not surprised to hear that Waller County was the second-fastest growing county in the nation last year.
Roland, 65, recently bought a home in the new Lakeview master-planned community in the heart of Waller County, where crops and cattle pastures still dominate the windswept landscape.
Removed from major corridors like Interstate 10 or Highway 290, where most of the county’s new homes have been situated, Lakeview is in the early stages of its development, with about 100 houses completed. When Roland, who works remotely two days a week, takes his midday break to walk around the neighborhood, he does so under a burning sun — the saplings that line Lakeview roads are not yet tall enough to provide any shade.
But even here, there’s no doubt about what lies on the horizon. Beyond the striped construction barriers that mark the end of the neighborhood roads, bulldozers are busy clearing land for up to 800 more homes.
Homes in various phases of construction are seen in the Lakeview subdivision, Wednesday, April 15, 2026, in Waller County.
Jason Fochtman/Houston Chronicle
Roland had lived in Cypress for about 25 years before moving out to Pflugerville, outside of Austin, for a short period of time. When his family moved back to the Houston area, they wanted some space to breathe and settled on a new house in the Lakeview community, just the sixth one to be completed.
“We like the extra room,” Roland said. “All these lots are one and two-acre lots, so we’re a little more spread out, not right on top of one another.”
The influx of new residents has forced county leadership to embark on a massive hiring spree to keep up with the growth. New residents generate a need for more clerks, more sheriff’s deputies, more engineers and more prosecutors, to name just a few.
“Since I became judge (in 2015), we’ve almost doubled the number of employees that we have at the county, and that’s just to provide the same level of services that we’ve always provided,” Duhon said.
Among the departments that have seen the greatest growth is the sheriff’s office. That’s because with more residents also comes more crime.
Cung Nguyen, 41, moved from Alief to Sunterra, an immense master-planned community north of Katy, in 2024 to give his family the idyllic suburban life he felt they deserved. Slated for over 7,000 homes, Sunterra already feels like a small city of its own, with wide roads that twist and turn into a veritable suburban maze.
Homes are seen in Sunterra, a community of 7,000 homes in the Katy area, Wednesday, April 15, 2026.
Jason Fochtman/Houston Chronicle
Nguyen was drawn to the neighborhood by its amenities, like the winding lazy river and sparkling man-made beach, but was spooked by a recent shooting near one of the Sunterra community centers, which occurred in the Harris County portion of the development.
He’s now considering moving his family to Cypress.
“That’s the whole reason I moved out here, to get away from things like that,” Nguyen said.
Guidry said the sheriff’s office has grown from 104 staffers to 186, including 116 certified deputies, since he was elected to the position in 2021. The county has seen spikes in reports of domestic violence and theft, he said, and launched a DWI task force to address the growing number of intoxicated drivers on county roadways.
READ MORE: Houston, Harris County led U.S. population growth, but gains slowed amid Trump immigration crackdown
The new county jail, which was built in 2021 to house up to 200 inmates, is already “bulging at the seams,” Guidry said, with an average of 192 inmates per day. The county has already added several more judges to its ranks to try and keep a backlog from building up, Guidry said.
“We don’t want to turn into catch-and-release like the surrounding counties because of our jail population, but we’re pushing hard to make the criminals want to go around us,” Guidry said.
Waller County’s future
It’s difficult to predict whether Waller County will sustain this rate of growth moving forward. On one hand, growth in most American counties is slowing down as Trump cuts down on immigration, potential movers stay home and birth rates start to taper off.
On the other hand, Waller County was one of the only counties that proved immune to that confluence of forces in 2025.
People run along a path in Sunterra, a community of 7,000 homes in the Katy area, Wednesday, April 15, 2026.
Jason Fochtman/Houston Chronicle
The Texas Demographic Center’s 2024 population projections predicted that Waller County will grow to 72,000 people by 2030. If they sustain the same rate of growth this year that they did in 2025, they will have eclipsed that number four years ahead of schedule.
“I know the growth we’re about to see,” Duhon said. “That’s the kind of stuff that as a county judge, will keep you up at night.”