![\"Placeholder\"\/](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/placeholder.png\")
<\/p>\n
\n Bisnow\/Maddy McCarty\n <\/p>\n
\n Winstead\u2019s George Craft, Camden Property Trust\u2019s Laurie Baker, The Signorelli Co.\u2019s Danny Signorelli, Midway\u2019s Brad Freels and Partners Real Estate\u2019s Jon Silberman\n <\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re not as affordable as we used to be,\u201d Laurie Baker<\/a>, chief operating officer for Camden Property Trust<\/a>, said at Bisnow\u2019s 2026 Houston Executive Market Kickoff event at The Briar Club on Wednesday.\u00a0<\/p>\n Even if a developer builds a house as cheaply as possible, taxes and insurance drive up monthly payments to a rate not attainable for the traditional first-time homebuyer, The Signorelli Co<\/a>. CEO Danny Signorelli<\/a> said.<\/p>\n \u201cSomething that keeps me up at night, that one is more of a political battle than anything,\u201d Signorelli said. \u201cIt’s unjust, it’s unfair, and it’s screwing up the Texas Miracle.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n The Signorelli Co.\u2019s First America Homes can build a house for cheaper than it could three years ago, spending about $35K per home it sells, he said.<\/p>\n \u201cIt hasn’t changed the story for that person that would like to buy a house for 250 grand because they can’t cover the taxes, the insurance, the whole deal,\u201d Signorelli said.<\/p>\n First America Homes is buying down interest rates so buyers can qualify for a 3.5% mortgage. This leaves no profit but keeps a team alive and building houses \u201cuntil other things get figured out,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n In Greater Houston, 88,634 single-family properties sold last year<\/a>. That\u2019s comparable to a pre-pandemic 2019, when 86,205 homes sold<\/a>, though the metro\u2019s population has increased at more than double that rate.<\/p>\n The median Houston single-family home price also increased over the same period, from $245K to $335K, according to data from the Houston Association of Realtors. The affordability gap between Texas and other states is narrowing, Signorelli said.\u00a0<\/p>\n These circumstances are keeping people in apartments longer. Multifamily REIT Camden is seeing\u00a0all-time-high\u00a0lease renewal rates, in the 70% range, Baker said. But that\u2019s still not enough to push rents up while the market comes off a 50-year-high delivery rate and inflation persists.<\/p>\n \u201c[This] should help our margins because we\u2019re not turning as many units, but we just don\u2019t have the pricing power right now,\u201d Baker said. \u201cThere\u2019s a lot of cost pressures, too.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Baker expects a better 2026 than 2025, though.\u00a0The pandemic created an incredible demand for homes and apartments, and Camden began developing about 600,000 units per year, up from its historical average of 300,000 units per year,\u00a0she said.<\/p>\n Construction starts plunged as interest rates and construction costs rose, and capital markets retreated in recent years. Now, deliveries are also finally slowing down, so demand will get the chance to catch up.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat I\u2019m most excited about and optimistic about is that this 50-year high of construction is falling off,\u201d Baker said.<\/p>\n That will allow for rent growth, which has been negative in many of Camden\u2019s markets for the past couple of years. Houston CRE executives also lean on the metro\u2019s economic and population growth, which continues to spur demand and development.<\/p>\n \u201cThere are a lot of good things happening in the economy,\u201d Baker said. \u201cYes, there’s a lot of confusion out there, and there’s a lot of concern about what’s happening. But at the same time, we’re starting to see that balance coming into play with supply and demand, and we’re excited about that.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Houston commercial real estate executives are caught in a balancing act. They\u2019re optimistic about Houston\u2019s cultural vibrance, economic…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":125929,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[54369,54371,56,24716,58,57,54370,2051,54373,54372,49936],"class_list":{"0":"post-125928","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-houston","8":"tag-camden-property-trust","9":"tag-danny-signorelli","10":"tag-houston","11":"tag-houston-association-of-realtors","12":"tag-houston-headlines","13":"tag-houston-news","14":"tag-laurie-baker","15":"tag-taxes","16":"tag-texas-miracle","17":"tag-the-signorelli-co","18":"tag-the-signorelli-company"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125928","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=125928"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125928\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/125929"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=125928"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=125928"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=125928"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}