Harris County experienced its sharpest one-year pullback from homeownership in a decade in 2024. The decline landed disproportionately on Black families, according to the Kinder Institute for Urban Research’s newly released State of Housing in Harris County and Houston report.
Roughly 19,000 fewer county households owned their homes in 2024 than the year before, while nearly 30,000 more became renters. That drove the county’s homeowner-occupied rate down from 55.2% to 53.8%, the steepest single-year decline since 2014, and the biggest loss of owner-occupied households since 2010.
Courtney Johnson Rose, the former president of the National Association of Real Estate Brokers (NAREB) and a real estate broker, said the decline in Black homeownership in Harris County reflects a combination of rising housing costs, economic pressures, income disparities, and the burden of student loan debt on younger Black buyers.
“All of these things going up make the cost of being a homeowner even higher,” Rose said. “In addition to that, most of our housing stock is older homes. The cost of maintenance is higher for owning a home because you’re dealing with an older property. The cost of gas and food goes up, but your income has not gone up at that same pace.”
Black homeownership on the decline
Black and Hispanic residents bore the brunt of the shift.
- Harris County lost more than 7,000 Black and Hispanic owner-occupied households
- Houston lost more than 11,000 Black homeowner households, with modest gains elsewhere in the county
- More Black (5,000) and Hispanic households shifted to renting, particularly Hispanic families (26,000)
Rose identified Black millennials as a particularly affected group, noting that debt-to-income ratios, rather than poor credit or lack of a down payment, are often the primary reason Black applicants are denied mortgages.
“There is not an institution designed to deal with the gaps that are preventing Black people from getting over the finish line, when it comes to sustainable homeownership.”
Michael Davis, president of the Houston Black Real Estate Association
“When you look at loan debt amongst Black millennials, as the cost of housing increases with student loan debt, it makes it that much harder to qualify to be able to purchase,” she added.
Years of rising costs finally catch up
Although home prices themselves held fairly steady in 2024, researchers and real estate professionals point to an accumulation of expenses that has been building for years.
In five years (2019-2024), the county’s median home sale price climbed by almost $100,000, while 30-year mortgage rates jumped 3%.
Median residential property taxes also increased (from about $3,800 to $4,400) over this period.
Insurance and tax bills rose sharply as well, with median annual homeowners’ insurance premiums increasing.
The compounding costs have hit historically Black neighborhoods especially hard.
Communities such as Acres Homes, South Acres/Crestmont Park, and East Little York/Homestead, areas with large concentrations of Black homeowners, saw some of the fastest home-price growth in the county between 2020 and 2025, with typical increases of $75,000 to $125,000.
As property values in these neighborhoods rose, so did the tax bills tied to them.
Michael Davis, president of the Houston Black Real Estate Association and founder of the Michael G. Davis & Associates, argues that declining Black homeownership is not a matter of choice for Black Harris County residents.
“There is not an institution designed to deal with the gaps that are preventing Black people from getting over the finish line, when it comes to sustainable homeownership,” Davis said. “
Many Black families have missed out on the institutional knowledge about property taxes and insurance costs that have historically been passed down, Davis explained, also citing mistrust of existing financial institutions as a major barrier.
“What’s happening now economically and the political environments we’re dealing with, that’s impacting a lot of Black people,” Davis said.
A warning sign for wealth-building
Homeownership has long been one of the primary paths to building generational wealth in the United States, and researchers warn that a sustained decline could have lasting consequences for Harris County’s Black community in particular.
“Obviously, there are many ways to acquire wealth, but homeownership is historically a very popular one,” said Steve Sherman, Kinder Institute research scientist and a co-author of the report. “This raises the question of whether it will continue to be in Harris County.”
