A fresh statewide analysis released this week found that 45 percent of Texas renters are spending more than 30 percent of their income on housing, the standard benchmark for being considered cost-burdened - and in the state's priciest zip codes, from Frisco to Plano, the math keeps getting harder. More than 4.2 million Texas households now rent, and nearly half of them are watching their paychecks vanish into rent before anything else gets paid.
The figures come from a Texas Affiliation of Affordable Housing Providers report highlighted by CultureMap Austin, which also found that 81 percent of extremely low-income Texas households spend more than half their income on housing, a threshold researchers classify as severely cost-burdened. The report pegs the state's shortage of affordable homes for extremely low-income households at 864,000 units, and says Texas needs more than 320,000 additional affordable homes just to keep pace with workforce demand and population growth.
Renter Wages Trail What a Two-Bedroom Actually Costs
According to the National Low Income Housing Coalition's "Out of Reach 2026" report, as relayed by Texas Housers, a Texas renter needs to earn $29.93 an hour to afford a modest two-bedroom apartment without becoming cost-burdened, but the average Texas renter earns just $26.09 an hour. The gap is even steeper in the state's largest metros: Houston renters need $30.25 an hour, Fort Worth renters need $33.13, Austin renters need $35.62, and Dallas renters need the most at $37.13 an hour, per the same report.
The wage gap tracks with how Texans say they feel about their own bills. A July survey of 1,128 Texas adults conducted for the Texas Affiliation of Affordable Housing Providers ahead of the 2026 midterms found that 60 percent of respondents said their housing costs had risen over the past year, as reported by The Texas Tribune.
Frisco Tops Texas Rent Rankings, San Antonio Offers Relief
Frisco topped the list as the most expensive place in Texas to rent, with an average apartment going for $1,477 a month, per apartments.com data cited by CultureMap Austin. Plano ranked second at $1,461, Austin came in third at $1,417, and Dallas placed fourth at $1,413. McKinney, Grand Prairie, Irving, Garland, Fort Worth, and Houston rounded out the top ten, with average rents ranging from $1,363 in McKinney down to $1,183 in Houston.
For renters looking for a cheaper option, San Antonio averaged $1,075 a month, and Mesquite, a Dallas-Fort Worth suburb, averaged just $1,052, both well below the statewide top-ten list. Texas apartments themselves aren't especially spacious, either - average unit sizes range from 713 square feet in Austin to 771 square feet in Plano, according to the same analysis.
State Leaders Tout New Money and Looser Zoning Rules
Governor Greg Abbott has pointed to state action as a counterweight, announcing in July more than $114 million in federal housing tax credits for 70 rental properties, enough to build or renovate 4,400 affordable units statewide, according to the Office of the Texas Governor. Hoodline previously reported that the award was the largest allocation in TDHCA history, made possible by a 12 percent increase to the federal credit ceiling under the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. "Texans need access to affordable housing to thrive," Abbott said.
State lawmakers have also loosened zoning rules to spur supply. Senate Bill 840, which took effect in September 2025, allows commercial, retail, and warehouse properties in Texas cities with more than 150,000 residents to convert into multifamily housing by-right, and it has facilitated more than 8,400 new residential units statewide as of July, according to The Texas Tribune. Some North Texas cities have since adopted local height and design restrictions aimed at slowing those projects, the newspaper reports.
Construction Slowdown Could Erase Recent Rent Relief
Meanwhile, the construction pipeline that helped soften rents is drying up. Texas delivered nearly 120,000 apartment units in 2024, but statewide multifamily construction starts have since fallen more than 70 percent from their 2022 peak, with 2026 completions expected to slow to roughly 45,000 units, according to Lumicre. High interest rates and elevated building-material tariffs are cited as factors in the slowdown.
In North Texas, that supply crunch hasn't yet reversed course. The Dallas-Fort Worth region's multifamily occupancy rebounded to 93.8 percent in the second quarter with average asking rents climbing to $1,496, even with 24,133 units still under construction, per GlobeSt's reporting on Colliers data.
A separate March analysis by the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas found that while new apartment supply has pushed asking rents down across major Texas cities, landlord concessions - such as six to twelve weeks of free rent - are masking the true cost of renting. Austin and Dallas led the state in how often those concessions were offered, the bank noted.
Affordable Rankings Clash With What Renters Feel
The tension between falling headline rents and lived affordability has already surfaced in Houston and beyond. Hoodline reported that a Rice University Kinder Institute study found 52.6 percent of Houston renters and 51.2 percent of Harris County renters spend more than 30 percent of their income on housing, even as Houston rents dipped slightly - separate data showed Houston rents have still climbed $313 a month since 2019. A similar disconnect appeared in a July Redfin analysis that ranked Austin, Houston, and Dallas among the nation's top metros for renter affordability based on rent-to-income ratios. But as Hoodline noted, locals aren't buying the affordable label, with local economists pointing to higher utility and transportation costs that erode those nominal savings.
Housing supply in Texas still hasn't caught up with demand, per CultureMap Austin's reporting on the affordable housing providers' findings, even as the state keeps adding thousands of new jobs - a mismatch researchers warn could keep constraining Texas's broader economic growth if left unaddressed.
