Houston Strong Market Trend

The real estate market is proving it is “Houston Strong” with its astonishing resilience.

Even with massive flooding and in some cases weeks of lost business, the housing market is steady. Home sales cooled in August, which is normally a slow real estate month due to summer vacations and back to school, but single family home sales are reportedly up by 4% in September. According to HAR, looking at a year-to-date basis, home sales remain 2.3 percent ahead of the 2016 volume despite Harvey. Home prices are stable with a rise of just 0.10%.

It seems the only negative to be seen is in inventory. Typically, Houston has several months of available housing inventory, but the number of properties needing rebuilds has decreased the number to 3.9 from 4.4 months, which is just below the national average.

The rental market is incredibly strong due to displaced Houstonians quickly finding temporary shelter and attempting normalcy until new homes can be bought. Single family rentals gained an impressive (but logical) 86%.

What does the future hold? Some experts are comparing the exit migration of Houston due the Harvey as similar to the oil bust of the 1980s. Those same experts espoused doom and gloom in February’s oil slump and Houston proved them wrong. While oil is a big part of Houston and hurricanes are a possibility with our location near the coast, the diversity of our city with it’s growing boarders and dynamic workforce in multiple industries will continue to attract residents and encourage people to return, and with people the housing market will continue to grow.