Real estate Home Edition
BY MELISSA ENAJE
2025
Readers, welcome to the annual CI Home Edition! This year’s coverage focuses on the growing demand and development of multifamily housing complexes within Loop 610, including the explosive growth of the Heights and neighboring areas such as Montrose and Upper Kirby. Our deep dive includes mapping where proposed apartment buildings will pop up in the next several years, rent comparison and population trends. In this special edition, we also explore other key issues facing Houston’s housing landscape, including affordability and climate change, which is raising flood risks and insurance premiums across Harris County. We also examine a proposed city ordinance that would strengthen Houston’s ability to crack down on unsafe apartment complexes—one of several responses to mounting concerns about housing quality and tenant safety. Further out, new state laws are also beginning to alter how neighborhoods grow. Senate Bill 15, which targets local regulations on minimum lot sizes, could impact how future housing is built in cities like Houston. Overall, this edition is packed with insights to help Houston residents better navigate the housing landscape.
What's inside
Read more about how Houston plans to deal with unsafe apartment complexes (Page 15)
Cassandra Jenkins Editor cjenkins@ communityimpact.com
Dive into the details of Senate Bill 15 and how it will affect housing lot sizes (Page 19)
See statistics on the real estate market for homes in the Inner Loop (Page 20)
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Livability, affordability threatened in Harris County by rising climate risks
Factors such as rising home prices, surging premiums and growing climate risks are reshaping how and where Harris County residents live. Key findings
More than 20% of all county housing units are in one of three major flood areas: floodways, the 100-year floodplain and the 500-year floodplain* 63 of 143 neighborhoods have lost population since 2018 in Greater Houston $15,000 on average is being added to home insurance costs brought upon by extreme weather events
Extreme weather and climate change are seeing ripple effects on neighborhood livability across Harris County, according to a June 17 report by Rice University’s Kinder Institute of Urban Research. Housing experts recommend data-driven infra- structure planning and accurate flood risk mapping to address climate risks across the county. “The risk is going to continue to grow, and it’s really on us to figure out and start to understand what we do with these spaces where we have so much infrastructure and economic investment and development in a place like Houston,” said Jeremy Porter, head of climate implications research at the nonprofit First Street. Porter said his work has translated into actionable insights in the housing space, including adding climate-risk scores to housing search websites so
buyers can understand how much risk could cost in the future. “It’s important for us to start to think about what are the smartest ways we can adapt to the risk we have today. But let’s future-proof it and build for what the climate is going to be like in 30 years,” Porter said. Digging deeper In fact, Harris County lost nearly 80 square miles, or more than 51,000 acres of green space, from 2014 to 2023, to developments, which could lead to more flood and heat risks, officials said. Taking precipi- tation into account is part of calculating flood risks, Porter said. “Climate correcting these authoritative pieces that drive things like infrastructure development, stormwater management, all of the infrastructure
*A 100-YEAR FLOODPLAIN HAS A 1% CHANCE OF BEING FLOODED IN ANY GIVEN YEAR, WHILE A 500-YEAR FLOODPLAIN HAS A 0.2% CHANCE. SOURCE: KINDER INSTITUTE FOR URBAN RESEARCH/COMMUNITY IMPACT
that is put into a city like Houston relies on [National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration] Atlas 14 precipitation records,” Porter said. “We should be building infrastructure to not only address today’s risk but future risk, so it’s not outdated immediately as we build that.”
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