Communities outside the Grand Parkway are seeing strongest home sales growth, HAR finds
It is well known that most of Houston’s growth is happening in the suburbs. But one area in particular is benefiting most from the trend currently, and it’s way out west.
Home sales in the Fulshear-South Brookshire-Simonton area jumped by 103.6% from the fourth quarter of 2022 to the fourth quarter of 2023, according to the Houston Association of Realtors’ latest “Hottest Communities in the Houston Area” report.
Simonton, a small town on the eastern bank of the Brazos River in Fort Bend County, is nearly 40 miles from downtown Houston.
Other communities on the list are not much closer to the city. Seven of the top 10 hottest communities in Greater Houston are on or outside of the Grand Parkway.
With 83.6% year-over-year sales growth, the Crosby area came in second, followed by Conroe Southeast with 77.3%.
Other communities in the top 10 include Porter-New Caney West, Waller, Baytown-Chambers County, Sugar Land North, Cypress South, Northwest Houston and Dayton.
Of the 50 Houston-area communities HAR analyzed, 33 had positive home sales in the fourth quarter, while 12 saw negative year-over-year growth and four stayed the same. Denver Harbor — in eastern Houston, inside the 610 Loop and north of the Houston Ship Channel turning basin — had the largest drop in sales, at -5.3%.
The homebuying activity far away from the city confirms a longstanding trend of higher growth in the suburbs than in the urban core.
That trend has accelerated since the Covid-19 pandemic, when people were confined to their homes and were looking for more space, and remote work has since become the norm for at least part of the week.
While Greater Houston gained 125,000 residents from 2021 to 2022, the vast majority of that growth — 79,300 — happened in the eight outer counties of the region, compared to 45,600 in Harris County, according to a Rice University analysis of U.S. Census data.
One important reason is affordability. Eight of the top 10 hottest areas had average home prices below the Houston-wide average of approximately $412,000.
“I think that that trend has accelerated quite simply because of the drop in prices,” HAR Vice Chair Shae Cottar said. “People are seeing opportunities, and I know that over the last few years, we saw incredible jumps in home prices.”
He attributes the lower prices in some of those suburban areas to strong new home construction, which helped bring Houston’s inventory back up to about a 3.5 months’ supply of homes, up from 1.4 months in 2021. A four- to six-month supply is considered a balanced market.
In the top five communities on HAR’s list, new home sales made up at least half of the total sales.
Notably, at nearly $519,000, the average home price in the Fulshear-South Brookshire-Simonton area was well above the regional average.
Cottar suspects this is due to most sales in that area being new and larger homes. A higher proportion of new homes could also explain why houses in that community took longer to sell than in others. Average days on market for Fulshear-South Brookshire-Simonton was 62, compared to 48 in the Crosby area and 34 in Northwest Houston.
“Often, builders put up homes on the (multiple listing service) that drive those days on the market,” Cottar said. “But they’re still in process, and so people go under contract, but that home isn’t really complete yet.”
The numbers also show that people are moving farther and farther away from Houston’s urban core, as what used to be considered rural is increasingly becoming suburban.
As an example, Cottar mentioned Mont Belvieu in Liberty County, which is undergoing major residential development.
“They’re looking to go further east as they try to capture what they used to have in the Mont Belvieu area, which is that more rural feel,” he said, “similar to what people are flocking towards Fulshear and South Brookshire for.”
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