Rice University officials unveiled the 2026 State of Housing report for Harris County and the city of Houston, highlighting a number of challenges, including over 50% of surveyed residents expressing concern regarding home affordability.
The breakdown
Rice University's Kinder Institute for Urban Research unveiled a new interactive dashboard June 16, highlighting a number of changes in the housing market in Harris County and the city of Houston. The largest changes came in declining home affordability and even homeownership among all populations, with the largest declines overall among Black homeowners.
"This is larger than the worst declines during the Great Recession, and the biggest we've seen since these data was tracked yearly starting in 2005," Kinder Institute research scientist Stephen Averill Sherman said. "What's interesting is that these declines in homeownership coincide with the period when housing prices kind of stabilized."
According to the data, there are 14,000 fewer homeowners within the city of Houston and 19,000 fewer homeowners in Harris County compared to 2023. However, a growing number of homeowners are also expressing new uncertainty about affording housing, Sherman said.
Major concern points for existing and potential homeowners include:
- 56% are at least "a little" worried about becoming priced out of housing.
- 58% are at least "a little" worried about being able to afford housing costs.
- 25% worry "sometimes" or "more often" about being forced to move due to being priced out of housing.
Diving deeper
Sherman said major factors affecting homeownership rates include the rapid growth of multifamily and rental properties.
"Houston is a renter city," Sherman said. "About 60% of Houston households are renters and, as of 2017, Houston has more multifamily housing units, which are disproportionately renter-occupied than single-family homes."
The data shows a majority of renters are now cost-burdened, or spending more than 30% of their income on housing, which Sherman said is an alarming trend in the market.
"This is a new threshold. We've crossed the Rubicon here," Sherman said. "We haven't had a majority of cost-burdened renters in both [suburbs and cities] before. This signals the problems have local local renters have, meaning not just the rent itself, but also the necessary costs of living."
The recent release of draft floodplain maps from the Federal Emergency Management Administration now show 28% of housing units in Harris County are within the floodplain. Which adds another level of expense in home flood insurance, Sherman said.
"Unlike home sales prices, which have plateaued, home insurance prices have continued to increase," Sherman said.
The takeaway
The interactive dashboard was launched to allow the public to view data points such as changing housing costs, demographics and affordable housing locations. The dashboard was developed by the Kinder Institute in partnership with:
- Harris County Housing and Community Development
- City of Houston Housing and Community Development Department
- Houston Endowment
- Arnold Ventures
