Houston remains one of the more affordable major cities in the U.S., but a new report suggests that status is becoming increasingly difficult to maintain.
The 2025 State of Housing in Harris County and Houston report, released by Rice University’s Kinder Institute for Urban Research, highlights a range of factors reshaping housing affordability and influencing where residents can afford to live.
Recommended Videos
Among the key drivers are rising home prices, escalating insurance premiums, and increasing climate-related risks.
In Harris County, the median home price has reached roughly $325,000. However, a household earning the area’s median income can only afford a home priced around $195,000. This growing affordability gap is placing homeownership further out of reach for many families.
“Every year, that gap gets wider,” said Stephen Sherman, a research scientist at the Kinder Institute. “Homeowners’ insurance alone rose 18% over the past year and nearly 40% in recent years. That’s a financial strain that impacts not just homeowners but renters as well.”
This year’s report also includes a section on climate resilience, exploring how environmental stressors such as flooding, extreme heat, and inadequate infrastructure are increasingly intertwined with housing affordability throughout the region.
While renters’ insurance costs have remained relatively stable, developers are facing mounting challenges.
“Rising insurance costs are making it harder to finance affordable housing developments,” said Caroline Cheong, an associate director of the Kinder Institute’s Center for Housing and Neighborhoods. “If developers can’t see a return on investment, the housing pipeline suffers.”
The report found that an additional 15,000 renter households became cost-burdened in just one year, spending more than 30% of their income on housing.
Still, the report did identify a slight increase in homeownership, which Cheong attributes to factors such as post-pandemic savings or migration from more expensive states like California and New York.
Produced by the Kinder Institute’s Center for Housing and Neighborhoods, the 2025 report and interactive dashboard are now available here.
