Houston Market Report · June 2026
The Houston Market in May 2026
Pending sales hit a four-year high in May, even as closings softened — and the luxury segment surged 10% to push the average price to its highest level in nearly a year.
The Numbers
May sent a mixed but genuinely encouraging signal. Closed sales dipped 3.2% year over year to 8,631 homes, but pending sales — contracts signed that close in the following months — jumped 5.8% to 9,172, the strongest level of contract activity since May 2022. When pending activity outpaces closings this clearly, it usually means the pipeline is about to strengthen, not weaken.
The luxury segment did the heavy lifting on price: sales of homes at $1 million and above surged 10.1% year over year, pushing the average sale price up 2.3% to $447,301 — its highest point since June 2025. The median price, by contrast, was essentially flat at $340,000, meaning the 'typical' Houston home didn't get meaningfully more expensive even as the market's upper end ran hot.
Inventory growth cooled to its slowest pace of the year so far — active listings up just 2.4% to 37,619 homes, with months of supply flat at 5.1. After several months of double-digit inventory growth, May looked like the first real sign that the supply surge of early 2026 was leveling off rather than continuing indefinitely.
A Four-Year High in Contracts Is the Number That Matters
For sellers who saw May's closed-sales dip and worried, the pending-sales number is the one to actually watch — a four-year high in signed contracts means buyer demand was real and about to show up in June and July's closing numbers.
If you're shopping or selling in the luxury tier, May confirmed that segment is running hotter than the rest of the market for the second time this year (after January) — worth factoring into pricing strategy on either side of that kind of transaction.
For everyone else, a flat median price with slowing inventory growth is a genuinely stable setup — not a sign of a market about to spike or soften sharply in either direction.
Sales data sourced from the Houston Association of Realtors' (HAR) monthly Housing Market Update, covering May 2026. Shopping in the luxury tier instead? See our Luxury Market Report.
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