Greater Houston's single-family home market recorded 7,100 closed sales in August, an 11.5% decline from a year earlier. At the same time, active listings rose to 38,947 and inventory reached 5.3 months of supply, above the national average of 4.6 months. The figures describe a market with more available homes but fewer completed transactions.
The figures come from the Houston Association of REALTORS®' August monthly housing update, as reported by Community Impact. Theresa Hill characterized the conditions as “healthier for consumers and a positive sign for the long-term strength of the market,” but the same data show that expanded selection has not produced higher closing volume.
Across all Greater Houston property types, including townhomes, condos, multifamily units and land, August transactions fell 10.2% year over year to 8,362, while sales volume totaled roughly $3.5 billion, according to HAR.com. Active listings across those categories reached 60,390, up 1.0% from August 2025. That broader measure reinforces the distinction between the number of properties available and the number of deals that close.
Mortgage Rates Squeeze Middle-Tier Buyers Hardest
The financing backdrop remains difficult for many buyers. The average 30-year fixed mortgage rate reached 6.67% in August, compared with 6.59% a year earlier, based on Freddie Mac benchmark data cited by HAR.com. Sales of homes priced from $150,000 to $249,999 fell 11.3% year over year, while sales of homes priced at $1 million and above declined 2.1%, the smallest drop among the reported price tiers, according to Community Impact. The figures show uneven effects across price bands rather than a uniform decline.
What More Listings Do—and Do Not—Show
The August listing count does not by itself establish whether the additional supply came mainly from newly built homes or from existing properties remaining available longer. The U.S. Census Bureau's Building Permits Survey measures new privately owned residential construction separately from resale listings and completed sales and provides monthly, year-to-date and annual data. Permit activity and resale inventory therefore answer different questions.
Buyers also need to account for costs that are not reflected in mortgage-rate comparisons. According to the Texas Department of Insurance, most homeowners policies do not cover flood damage, which may require separate flood coverage. The agency says most flood-insurance policies have a 30-day waiting period before coverage begins, making insurance terms and timing part of the effective cost of buying a Houston-area home.
HAR's affordability measures provide a more favorable counterpoint to the rate data. Homeowner affordability rates increased year over year in 22 of the last 25 months in the Greater Houston region, compared with 15 of the last 25 months nationally, according to Community Impact. HAR also reported that monthly principal-and-interest payments in the region declined year over year, even as borrowing costs remained elevated.
Prices Diverge Between Median and Average
Price indicators also point in different directions. The median single-family home price fell $5,000 to $330,000 in August, while the average sales price increased 1.2% year over year to $426,760, according to Houston Association of REALTORS®. My Neighborhood News attributed the gap to stronger activity in higher-priced tiers lifting the average even as the midpoint price softened.
Homes took an average of 54 days to sell in August, compared with 52 days a year earlier, according to HAR.com data. That measure indicates a modest increase in marketing time, while the available figures do not by themselves establish how many listings remained unsold at the end of the month.
Longer-Term Numbers Tell a Mixed Story
The longer view is not uniform. The region recorded 88,565 single-family sales in the 12 months ending in August, above the 2019 pre-pandemic full-year total of 86,999, according to HAR.com. At the same time, Community Impact reports that 2026 single-family sales were down 20.1% compared with 2019. Because those comparisons cover different periods, they should not be read as a single measure of the market's direction.
How August Compares With Other Housing Signals
The current resale cycle differs from an earlier period of stronger turnover. According to the Houston Association of REALTORS®, Greater Houston single-family sales rose 4.7% year over year in October 2018 to 6,716 homes, while inventory stood at 3.9 months of supply. The August 2026 figures therefore combine a higher supply measure with weaker year-over-year closing activity. The Census Bureau's permit data, meanwhile, track new privately owned residential construction separately from resale listings, so they cannot alone explain the August resale slowdown or establish whether employment and population changes caused it.
The rental market also shows supply-related pressure. According to CoStar Group's August 2026 multifamily report, Houston apartment rents fell 1.2% year over year, which adds evidence that increased housing supply was affecting renters as well as prospective homebuyers.
The slowdown fits into a broader pattern playing out across Greater Houston's suburbs this year. Hoodline has previously reported on buyers stampeding to outer suburbs as affordability pressures push demand further from the urban core, while Sugar Land and Missouri City posted local gains even as Conroe's market hit the brakes earlier this year. Combined with steady inventory growth and pending sales still above the 7,900 mark, the August figures point to a market cooling in transaction volume without the sharp price collapses that would signal genuine distress.
