Houston Homes Are Getting Cheaper

Home prices fell in the country’s best-supplied housing market this spring.

The Houston metropolitan area recorded the most active listings of any metro in the country last month, and sales prices dropped locally even while rising nationally, according to CoStar. These trendlines mirror Houston’s 2025 market, when prices trailed and inventory boomed from March to July compared to the same period in 2024.

The Bayou City ranks first in the country for home supply. Houston had 40,710 active listings in March, the highest number nationwide, CoStar found. That’s an increase of about 5,000 homes compared to March 2025, or a 14 percent year-over-year increase and the highest nominal growth in the country.

“Increased seller activity reflects pent-up listings, as some homeowners who delayed selling to protect low mortgage rates are beginning to reenter the market,” CoStar analyst Itziar Aguirre stated.

Concurrently, national home prices appreciated while Houston prices slumped. The national median sale price rose year-over-year in March by 1.3 percent to $385,000, but the median sale price of a Houston home fell by 2.1 percent to $331,000, CoStar found.

Other Texas metros are experiencing similar declines, but Houston leads the pack. Median sales prices fell by 1.3 percent in Austin, 1.2 percent in Dallas-Fort Worth and 0.6 percent in San Antonio, according to CoStar.

Job losses in the energy, finance and manufacturing industries in 2025 may be applying downward pressure on prices alongside a supply glut, according to Aguirre. Houston added just 17,500 jobs in 2025, about a quarter of a typical year, with the health care industry compensating for losses in other industries.

Houston’s energy industry continued to flag through the winter. Oil and gas employment in the Houston area dipped by 8 percent between November 2025 and February 2026 — the greatest decrease of the top 10 industries in the metro, according to the Dallas Fed. Energy industry employment in Houston this February also lagged last February by 7 percent.

A sustained increase in oil prices could eventually boost Houston home prices, but due to economic diversification over the last decade, the city isn’t as sensitive to oil shocks as it used to be, according to economists and local agents.

Houston repeatedly outstripped the rest of the country in active listing inventory last year, peaking in August with 44,000 active listings on the market, according to CoStar data. Single-family home prices trailed year-over-year from March to July, the Houston Association of Realtors reported, and prices for homes of all types fell as well in September, CoStar found.

The city closed out 2025 with its first annual median sales price decline since the pandemic. The median sales price of a Houston home grew from $294,000 in 2021 to $330,000 in 2024, then declined to $328,000 in 2025, according to data provided by the Houston Association of Realtors.