Houston Real Estate Market Report: Winter 2025–2026

Writing this report in February 2026 means I am four years into watching the Houston real estate market and into this report series, and the market I am observing right now is the most settled it has been since Spring 2022. That is not a claim that it is easy or cheap or that the rate environment is what buyers wish it were. It is an observation that the acute uncertainty of the 2022–2024 period has resolved into something that functions. Houston Association of Realtors (HAR)’s December data and January forward-looking indicators show a market that is doing what markets are supposed to do: clearing inventory at prices that reflect genuine supply and demand rather than speculative enthusiasm or panic.

The rate picture in February 2026 is worth checking in real time rather than accepting any number I write here, given the pace at which the bond market has been responding to economic data. The general framework: the Fed’s rate cut cycle that began in September 2024 has proceeded at a slower pace than markets hoped, and mortgage rates have reflected the bond market’s continued uncertainty about the terminal rate. Freddie Mac’s Primary Mortgage Market Survey (PMMS) has been in a range that makes buying viable for qualified buyers who are not waiting for a return to 2021 conditions — a return that is not coming on any near-term horizon that I can credibly describe.

Lock-In Effect: Four Years Later

One of the structural stories of this entire cycle has been the lock-in effect: homeowners with 3–4% mortgages declining to sell into a higher-rate environment. Four years into that environment, the effect is finally and measurably loosening. Life circumstances that have accumulated since 2022 — job changes, retirement, family transitions, estate situations — are producing a steady increase in listing volume from the cohort that had been frozen. HAR’s active listing data shows new listing volume that would have been unthinkable in 2023. This is healthy for the market: more supply without a collapse in demand produces the balanced conditions where both buyers and sellers can make confident long-term decisions.

Cypress/Northwest Corridor: Spring Setup

The spring showing inquiry that I track as a leading indicator of spring contract activity has been running ahead of last year’s pace in the Bridgeland and Marvida corridors since January. Families who want to complete their move before the August 2026 school year start are beginning their searches now. The buyers coming to the market in January and February are, in my experience, serious buyers — they are researching communities, understanding school district boundaries, and scheduling tours with specific criteria in mind rather than broad exploration. That buyer profile produces offers and contracts at a higher rate per showing than the casual spring browser who starts looking in April.

For sellers in the master-planned communities who are considering spring: the sellers who list in March capture these early-decision buyers before the field of competing listings grows. The sellers who wait for the spring peak find more competition among both buyers and listings simultaneously. The conventional wisdom that spring is the best time to list is true, but the first three weeks of spring are meaningfully different from the middle weeks when the market feels at its most active.

My Spring 2026 Prediction

Strong. That is the one-word version. The four-year accumulation of life circumstances that have been deferred, the pent-up demand from buyers who have been watching and waiting, the continued Houston employment and population growth, and the gradual if incomplete rate improvement from the October 2023 peak all converge to produce a spring setup that I am more bullish about than any spring I have written about in this series. I could be wrong — a macro shock, a re-acceleration of inflation, or an unexpected employment deterioration could change the picture quickly. But absent those shocks, spring 2026 in Houston looks like the release of four years of pent-up demand into a market that has the supply to absorb it without repeating 2021’s frenzy or producing 2022’s correction. That is a healthy market. Those are worth being in.