Real estate
BY HANNAH NORTON
Texas needs 306,000 more homes to meet demand, housing experts say
Zooming in
“[Texas is] issuing more building permits for single-family homes than any other state,” said Will Counihan, who leads the comptroller’s data analysis and transparency department. “One of the big issues that we’ve found is that [people are] perhaps not building the right types of houses, specifically housing for low- and mid- dle-income Texans.” One-third of Texas households are cost bur- dened, Counihan said, meaning they spend more than 30% of their salary on housing. A Texan who wants to sell their current home and purchase a new one should make about $113,000 to qualify for a mortgage loan, compared to about $70,000 at the beginning of the pan- demic, Knapp said.
highest property tax rate—1.68%—in 2021, according to research from the Tax Foundation. Home prices shot up during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, Knapp added, as remote work policies allowed more people to move to Texas. In 2019, the median home price in Texas was $241,358, according to data from the Texas Real Estate Research Center at Texas A&M University. Median home prices peaked around $340,000 in 2022 and came down to about $335,000 in 2023.
Texas’ population growth has outpaced homebuilding since 2020, resulting in a widespread housing shortage, the state comptroller’s office reported Aug. 27. A 2023 report from Up For Growth, a national housing policy organization, shows Texas needs about 306,000 more homes to meet demand. High home prices, steep mortgage rates and limited supply are driving some potential homebuyers out of the market, said Clare Knapp, a housing economist for the Austin Board of Realtors. Texas also had the sixth-
Texas home prices, 2020-23
Buying a home in Texas has become more expensive in the years since the COVID-19 pandemic began, according to the Texas Real Estate Research Center.
2020
2021
2022
2023
One more thing
25%
Texas should make it easier to build homes in commercial areas and reduce the minimum lot size for single-family residences, said Nicole Nosek, the founder of Texans for Reasonable Solutions, an organization that aims to solve the housing shortage. In May, city of Austin officials voted to cut the city’s minimum lot size from 5,750 square feet to 1,800 square feet. The change was proposed as a strategy to permit more housing types and smaller homes than have traditionally been allowed in Austin.
20%
15%
10%
5%
0%
$0- $69K
$70K- 99K
$100- $149K
$150K- 199K
$200K- $249K
$250K- $299K
$300K- $399K
$400K- $499K
$500K- $749K
Home price
SOURCE: TEXAS REAL ESTATE RESEARCH CENTER/COMMUNITY IMPACT
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