Houston’s housing market has flipped hard in favor of buyers. Houston has now become one of the top 10 strongest buyer’s markets in the nation with sellers outnumbering buyers by about 131 percent, per Redfin’s newest market trends report.
The Houston setup
Houston sits at 131%, part of a group of eight major U.S. metros where sellers outnumber buyers by at least two to one, alongside Orlando (122%), Las Vegas (117%), San Antonio (116%), Austin (115%) and Dallas (108%).
Houston, Orlando, Las Vegas and Dallas, along with Nashville, all posted record gaps between sellers and buyers in August. Texas metros are dominating the buyer’s-market rankings.
A national record, not just a Texas story
There were an estimated 57.9% more home sellers than buyers in August, the widest gap in Redfin data going back to 2013, jumping sharply from 52.1% in July.
Redfin counted about 1.53 million sellers versus 972,300 buyers nationwide, with the number of sellers up 3.9% month over month, the largest monthly increase in Redfin’s records, while buyers rose just 0.1%.
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Why the imbalance keeps widening
The pandemic-era mortgage lock-in effect kept millions of homeowners from moving because they did not want to give up mortgages below 3%–4%, but that effect is now weakening as more owners list despite higher rates while buyer demand remains constrained.
Existing-home sales fell another 2% in August to a 3.98 million annual pace, the lowest in 14 months, while available inventory climbed to 1.62 million homes.
Sellers are cracking, but not enough
About 6.1% of Houston sellers pulled their home from the market in July, compared with 2.4% nationally, and Houston buyers are walking away from nearly 20% of deals, the second highest rate in the country behind Atlanta.
Roughly one in four Houston-area listings had a price cut in July, about unchanged from a year ago, and the typical price cut is just about 4%. Standoff continues.
Options market and stocks to watch
Housing weakness in Sun Belt metros ripples through builders, brokerages, and mortgage names. A few tickers to monitor:
- DHI: D.R. Horton has heavy Texas exposure, including Houston. Watch for incentive commentary and margin guidance.
- LEN: Lennar is another Sun Belt-heavy builder. Watch for order trends in Houston, Dallas, and Austin.
- PHM: PulteGroup’s Texas and Florida mix puts it in the middle of the softest metros.
- RKT: Rocket Companies owns Redfin and is directly tied to mortgage origination volumes.
- Z: Zillow sees traffic and lead-gen impact when listing counts surge but transactions stall.
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