{"id":152613,"date":"2026-02-05T20:23:06","date_gmt":"2026-02-05T20:23:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/152613\/"},"modified":"2026-02-05T20:23:06","modified_gmt":"2026-02-05T20:23:06","slug":"affordability-improves-in-houston-as-44-of-households-can-afford-homeownership","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/152613\/","title":{"rendered":"Affordability improves in Houston as 44% of households can afford homeownership"},"content":{"rendered":"

Improved mortgage rates<\/a> and softening home prices meant that close to half of Houston-area households could afford a median-priced home at the end of 2025, according to the quarterly Housing and Rental Affordability Report from the Houston Association of REALTORS\u00ae<\/a>.<\/p>\n

As mortgage rates fell to 6.23%, the median home price decreased 0.9% year over year to $337,200 during the fourth quarter. Given those numbers, the typical monthly homeownership cost \u2014 including mortgage payment, principal, taxes and insurance \u2014 was $2,280, down from $2,490 a year prior.<\/p>\n

Houston households needed an annual salary of $91,200 to afford those monthly costs, down 3.4% year over year. That meant that 44% of households could afford homeownership, up from 40% in Q4 2024<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cAfter a challenging few years for buyers, we\u2019re starting to see affordability move in the right direction,\u201d said HAR Chair Theresa Hill<\/a>. \u201cIf these trends continue, we could see even more opportunities open up for buyers as we move through 2026.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Improved mortgage rates and softening home prices meant that close to half of Houston-area households could afford a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":152614,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[2067,27690,63147,56,24716,58,57,50989,27475,51001,56090],"class_list":["post-152613","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-houston","tag-affordability","tag-har","tag-homeownership","tag-houston","tag-houston-association-of-realtors","tag-houston-headlines","tag-houston-news","tag-houston-real-estate","tag-mortgage-rates","tag-sc","tag-theresa-hill"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/152613","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=152613"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/152613\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/152614"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=152613"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=152613"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=152613"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}