Find the right real estate agent in Houston.

Houston is the fourth-largest city in the United States and the economic capital of the global energy industry, but reducing it to oil and gas misses the story that matters for homebuyers. The Texas Medical Center is the world's largest medical complex, employing over 106,000 people across 60+ institutions including MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston Methodist, Baylor College of Medicine, and Texas Children's Hospital. NASA's Johnson Space Center runs human spaceflight operations. The Port of Houston is the busiest in the US by tonnage. And the energy transition itself, hydrogen, carbon capture, LNG, is headquartered here because the engineering talent, pipeline infrastructure, and capital markets already exist. The result is a metro of 7+ million people with an economy diversified enough to absorb oil-price swings that would devastate a single-industry city.

The housing market reflects Houston's fundamentals: affordable, abundant, and influenced by forces unique to the Gulf Coast. The $325,000 median is remarkably low for a metro of this scale, below Dallas ($390K), well below Austin ($450K), and a fraction of coastal peers like San Francisco or New York. Prices are essentially flat year-over-year (-0.3%), inventory has climbed to 4.8 months, and homes average 74 days on market. New construction is abundant thanks to Texas's lack of zoning restrictions (Houston famously has no zoning code) and flat, buildable terrain in every direction. This supply pipeline keeps prices moderate but also means that resale homes compete against new builds in a way that is unusual for a major metro.

The two forces that dominate Houston homebuying conversations are flooding and property taxes, and neither gets enough attention from relocators who are focused on sticker prices. Hurricane Harvey in 2017 flooded 300,000+ structures and exposed how inadequate FEMA flood maps had been. Since then, Harris County Flood Control District has invested billions in bayou widening, detention basins, and stormwater infrastructure, and flood maps have been updated. But flooding risk in Houston extends well beyond FEMA zones, always check address-level flood history, not just zone designation. Property taxes range from 1.8% to 2.5% effective rate, and MUD (Municipal Utility District) taxes in master-planned suburban communities can add another 0.5-1.5% on top. On a $325,000 home, total property-related taxes can reach $10,000+ annually. An agent who calculates total monthly cost, mortgage, property taxes, MUD taxes, HOA, flood insurance, homeowners insurance, rather than just showing listing prices is the difference between a smart Houston purchase and a costly surprise.