New home market booming in Houston suburbs

Nestled on a quiet street nestled between grassy fields and a half-built subdivision, a row of pristine model homes offers potential buyers a taste of Jordan Ranch life. Jordan Ranch is one of his growing number of master-planned communities in suburban Houston.

“It’s just neighborhoods popping up all over the place,” said Lauren Flathouse, a Houston-area real estate agent who moved to a new home nearby, about 55 miles west of downtown Houston. “It’s a very family-friendly community with beautiful amenities and great schools.”

He said builder incentives such as interest rate buybacks and the area’s relative affordability are also attractive to prospective homebuyers.

According to real estate data firm Zonda, the west zone of Greater Houston (which includes Katy, Texas) will see 10,000 new housing starts in 2023, more than most major housing markets including Las Vegas, Nashville and Seattle. exceeds.

Construction of more than 35,000 new homes will begin in the Houston metropolitan area in 2023, making it second in the nation after Dallas-Fort Worth in terms of new housing starts.

Thanks to rising interest rates and limited inventory, new construction homes are playing a bigger role in the single-family real estate market, and many homeowners, especially those who bought during the pandemic buying frenzy, are still sitting on their hands. It has become. Historically, new homes have accounted for about 10% of the market. Today, that percentage is more than 30%, according to the National Association of Realtors.

And when it comes to new construction, Texas suburbs still have relatively cheap land to expand outward as more newcomers move to Texas from overseas and other parts of the United States.

“We have some coming in from Portland right now.” [Oregon]” said Houston-area real estate agent Daniela Sumbera.

“Their home is worth about $1 million, but it’s probably 1,400 square feet, and what you can buy in the Houston area is much different. A 4,000 square foot home is worth about $1 million, but it’s probably 1,400 square feet, and what you can buy in the Houston area is much different. It’s easy to find one that has all the bells and whistles,” she said. “They are completely confused by how much housing they can get for much less.”

Roughly 60% to 70% of her company’s contracts are for new homes.

Houston’s housing starts have not been immune to the dampening effects of rising interest rates, but Zonda’s Brian Glasschagel said the negative impact has been less pronounced in Houston compared to other Texas markets such as Austin and San Antonio. Ta.

And new construction is expected to increase in 2024.

“The builders we speak to in the market have indicated that they believe construction starts this year will likely increase by more than 10% from where they ended in 2023,” Glasshagel said. Ta.

And in the long run, he says, it’s probably still not enough.

“Given the population growth, household growth and job growth that we expect in Houston, I think you can see this market being a little bit supply constrained as we move forward, but not significantly. But it’s also not completely balanced,” he said. .

And whether or not the suburbs are what homebuyers originally had in mind, it’s where people move. Sometimes out of economic necessity.

“Unfortunately, a lot of people are forced to make the decision, ‘My mortgage and my finances dictate that my only option is to move to the northwest quadrant of Houston and build a new home.’ It’s affordable to me.”Greater – said Matthew Leibenstein, president of the Houston Builders Association.

Home prices in the Jordan Ranch area start at around $300,000. They may be far from Houston’s urban center, but these new buildings illustrate a new way of living and working.

“We offer the option of a study or a bedroom, and a lot of people use that option as a study,” said local builder Richard Matlock. “This is a custom option that you can install in your home, but if you were building a stock home, you would put a den in it.”

When he started building his home 25 years ago, studying was a luxury, he said. “But now it exists in almost every household,” he said.

While the price of a spacious suburban home may come with a long commute (Houstonians joke that it’s an hour from Houston), developers are looking to buy everything from home studies and mortgage buyouts to bike paths. Until then, they are doing everything they can to sell the suburbs. Sometimes there is a nearby lazy river.