Latest Insights

Throughout 1Q24 the Houston Land market continued to be active with a healthy slate of development projects. Most of these projects are single-family residential projects and several are large, master-planned, mixed-use developments. As a result, single family home sales rose from 7,256 in March of 2023 to 7,926 in March of 2024. The inventory in Houston's housing market remains tight, but is gradually increasing towards more balanced levels. As of early 2024, the housing inventory stands at about 3.3 months, which is an improvement compared to the extremely low levels from previous years. These statistics indicate we are still in a seller's market.

The Houston region land market slowed in 4Q23 while developers are busy getting residential lots on the ground for the next two years. Developers are the most active buyers in the land market right now as the demand for master planned communities and commercial sites is picking up. Therefore, it truly is a developera€™s market. The total number of single-family home sales amounted to 6,103 in December 2023, marking a decrease of 6.2% compared to December 2022. This decline came after a note-worthy 4.7 percent increase in sales volume in November, which marked the first positive trend in homes sales in 19 months. As development projects complete in the next few years, it will be interesting to see how this will affect home sales with more homes coming on the market.

The Houston land market was robust in 3Q23 as developers continued to sell sites for master planned communities and commercial development, while speculative land investors kept buying well-placed, large, strategic land tracts. Single-family home sales across the market fell by 10.9% in September 2023 with 6,886 units sold compared to 7,728 units sold in September 2022. Continued market pressure from high interest rates artificially suppresses home sales, and is putting significantly more pressure on commercial real estate transactions for buyers using traditional financing sources. As we head into 4Q23, we expect land sales to continue primarily for residential development with less land trading for commercial development.