{"id":47631,"date":"2025-11-13T06:54:23","date_gmt":"2025-11-13T06:54:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/47631\/"},"modified":"2025-11-13T06:54:23","modified_gmt":"2025-11-13T06:54:23","slug":"is-the-worst-over-for-houston-homebuyers-heres-what-experts-say","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/47631\/","title":{"rendered":"Is the worst over for Houston homebuyers? Here’s what experts say."},"content":{"rendered":"

Houston homebuyers<\/a> got a little more breathing room this fall-not much, but enough to notice<\/a>.<\/p>\n

According to the latest affordability report <\/a>from the Houston Association of Realtors (HAR), 39 percent of Houston-area households could afford the median-priced home in the third quarter of 2025, up slightly from 37 percent a year earlier as prices dipped and mortgage rates steadied.<\/p>\n

HAR reported the median home price in the region fell 1.9 percent from last year to $341,600, while 30-year mortgage rates held near 6.5 percent. That put the typical monthly payment-including principal, taxes and insurance-around $2,510, about $40 less than last year. To stay within the standard affordability range, a household would need to earn roughly $100,400 a year, down about 1.6 percent from 2024.<\/p>\n

Statewide, 42 percent of Texas households could afford a median-priced home, compared with 35 percent nationally.<\/p>\n

“Lower mortgage rates and home prices are helping open the door for more Houstonians,” HAR Chair Shae Cottar said in the report. “While affordability is still a challenge, especially for first-time homebuyers, Houston and Texas continue to be among the more affordable markets nationwide.”<\/p>\n

That trend tracks with what Houston-area buyers have been doing all year-moving farther out<\/a> to find something in budget.<\/p>\n

In HAR’s recent list of Houston’s most popular communities, eight of the top 10 had average prices below the metro average of $442,000. Waller, Crosby, West of the Brazos and Hockley all saw strong sales growth, with Waller’s up 95 percent year over year as prices there fell 13 percent to $335,000.<\/p>\n

Even so, most Houston households-about 61 percent-still can’t afford the region’s median-priced home.<\/p>\n

For renters, the picture hasn’t changed much either, with 45 percent able to afford the average single-family lease.<\/p>\n

More News<\/p>\n

Politics | Latina Democrat enters 2026 Texas governor battle<\/a>
Gulf Coast | Strange boxes found on Texas beaches carry a toxic secret<\/a>
History | How a 1973 homicide led Houston to a notorious serial killer<\/a>
Money | Here’s how much you need to live comfortably in Houston<\/a><\/p>\n

For the latest and best from Chron, sign up for our daily newsletter here.<\/a><\/p>\n

This article originally published at Is the worst over for Houston homebuyers? Here’s what experts say.<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Houston homebuyers got a little more breathing room this fall-not much, but enough to notice. According to the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":47632,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[56,2873,58,57,27475],"class_list":["post-47631","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-houston","tag-houston","tag-houston-area","tag-houston-headlines","tag-houston-news","tag-mortgage-rates"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47631","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=47631"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47631\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/47632"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47631"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=47631"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=47631"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}