Harris County saw the biggest shift toward residents choosing to rent homes in a decade in 2024, as the costs of residential real estate weighed heavily on prospective and current homeowners.
About 19,000 fewer Harris County households lived in a home they owned in 2024 compared to the prior year, while nearly 30,000 more households opted to rent, according to the Kinder Institute for Urban Research’s 2026 State of Housing in Harris County and Houston report.
The change meant the share of Harris County households living in owner-occupied homes dropped year over year from 55.2% to 53.8% in 2024, the largest retreat since 2014.
The drop disproportionately hit Harris County residents of color, with 7,750 fewer Black households and 7,100 fewer Hispanic households living in an owner-occupied property. Notably, the city of Houston lost 11,300 Black owner-occupied households, with the rest of the county adding about 3,550.
By contrast, about 5,000 more Black households and nearly 26,000 more Hispanic households rented in Harris County.
The seventh-annual report, released Tuesday, examined dozens of affordability, household and development trends shaping the Harris County housing landscape, largely relying on Census Bureau estimates and Houston Association of Realtors data. Homeownership figures for 2025 and 2026 aren’t yet available.
The analysis revealed a residential real estate market that cooled following a spike in home sale prices, yet remained expensive for residents dealing with the cumulative increase in homeownership costs over the past several years.
Harris County’s homeownership rates have hovered between roughly 53% and 55% over the past decade, with modest fluctuations each year. Even with the decline in 2024, Harris County’s homeownership rate was identical to the figure in 2022 and higher than in 2019.
Still, the loss of 19,000 owner-occupied households is the biggest single-year reduction since 2010. If the trend continues, it could have long-lasting effects on the makeup of neighborhoods across Harris County, as well as the financial futures of many local residents.
“Obviously there are many ways to acquire wealth, but homeownership is historically a very popular one," said Kinder Institute research scientist Steve Sherman, a co-author of the report. “This raises the question of whether it will continue to be in Harris County.”
Compounding costs
While numerous factors play into decisions about where to live, local researchers and real estate leaders said they believe the cumulative costs of homeownership are increasingly catching up to Harris County residents. While real estate prices didn’t markedly change in 2024, homeowners had to contend with escalating expenses over multiple years.
In 2019, the county’s median home sale price totaled about $230,000 and 30-year fixed mortgage interest rates hovered near 4%. By 2024, the median sale price rose to $325,000, with interest rates near 7%.
In 2024 alone, the county’s median annual homeowners insurance premium rose from $1,970 to $2,300, a $330 increase, according to American Community Survey data. And from 2019 to 2024, the median amount of residential taxes paid during that time rose from roughly $3,800 to $4,400, per the ACS.
“We need to be focused on how we keep people housed and stabilize people’s housing costs,” said Ashley Allen, executive director of the nonprofit Houston Community Land Trust. “If we’re not coming up with methods to stabilize our housing costs, we’re going to see a lot of people have to make some tough choices.”
The decline in Black homeownership, in particular, may trace back to affordability.
Several Houston Outer Loop communities with large numbers of Black homeowners — including Acres Homes, South Acres / Crestmont Park and East Little York / Homestead — saw home prices rise at some of the highest rates in Harris County between 2020 and 2025. Those increases typically totaled about $75,000 to $125,000, or 30% to 60%.
As prices in those neighborhoods have risen, so have property values and associated property tax bills for residents.
“That’s all contributing to why people are being priced out of the market,” said Michael Davis, president of the Houston Black Real Estate Association. “We know it’s not a lack of aspiration to own. It’s the cost to enter the market.”
Looking to the future
Davis, whose real estate firm employs about 75 agents and brokers, said the falling homeownership rate reflects the daily frustrations of Harris County residents.
“Unfortunately, the decline is definitely concerning, but it’s not surprising,” Davis said. “Those of us working on the front lines of housing see it every day.”
For Allen, whose organization has helped about 200 households acquire homes through a land trust agreement, the decline in homeownership should trigger deeper discussions about affordability. She encouraged rehabbing vacant homes, building more small multifamily properties and keeping property taxes low for more middle-income homeowners.
“Yes, I think there are market forces (affecting homeownership),” Allen said. “However, I think we haven’t even tried to do anything differently. There’s so much in the middle that we do not build. Everything doesn’t have to be a luxury building.”
Sherman added that further reductions in homeownership will force policymakers and community leaders to confront the role of affordable housing in Harris County’s future.
“There are a lot of economic and community effects of homeownership,” Sherman said. “We want people to buy homes to grow their wealth and grow our region.”
