5%-10% of collected rent ($150/mo min), a one-time placement fee, and six guarantees in writing. Median rent in the area: ~$2,050/month. Bilingual team — English & 中文.
Greater Houston: The Heights, Montrose, Katy, Sugar Land, Cypress and The Woodlands.
Licensed in Texas — our Houston operations mirror our Lafayette service standards.
Corporate relocation and energy-sector demand fill quality rentals fast.
Also serving nearby: Lafayette · Baton Rouge · New Orleans · Lake Charles · Katy · Cypress · Pearland · Sugar Land · Beaumont — see all 10 city guides →
Researched October 2026. Sources: Houston Association of Realtors (HAR) August 2026 Rental Market Update; RentCafe / Yardi Matrix neighbourhood data (Aug 2026); Rent.com (Oct 2026); RentDataNow (Apr 2026); Houston ISD 2026 adopted tax rate; Harris County 2026 tax rates; U.S. Census ACS.
Houston is one of the few large US metros where rents were flat to falling in 2026. Apartment figures below come from Rent.com's October 2026 building survey; house figures from Rentometer and HAR.
| Bedroom | Rent / mo | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| 1 bed, apartment | $1,109 | Rent.com, Oct 2026 - down 11% year over year |
| 2 bed, apartment | $1,405 | Rent.com, Oct 2026 - down 11% year over year |
| 3 bed, single-family | $2,275 - $2,422 | Rentometer median $2,275 / average $2,422; HAR metro average $2,412 |
| All sizes, citywide | $1,541 | RentDataNow median, Apr 2026 - down 1.1% YoY |
Houston ISD covers most of the city proper and adopted a 2026 rate of $0.8421 per $100 - $0.6754 for maintenance and operations plus $0.1667 for debt service. Outside HISD the map fragments: Spring Branch ISD covers Memorial, Alief ISD the southwest, Clear Creek ISD Clear Lake, Cy-Fair ISD much of the northwest, and Katy ISD the far west. Every one of those carries a different rate, so a house on one side of a street can cost hundreds more a year to hold than the identical house opposite. Verify with the district's own address lookup, not a listing portal.
Houston's tenant base is unusually diversified for a Sun Belt metro: energy (the Energy Corridor and downtown towers), the Texas Medical Center, the Port of Houston, NASA's Johnson Space Center and the university system. Renter households make up 57.9% of the city and median household income is about $64,800. That breadth is why Houston rents did not spike as hard as Phoenix or Tampa in 2021-22 - and why they are not falling as hard in 2026 either.
Houston is not one market; it is dozens sharing a freeway system. The metro figure for July 2026 was $1,630 with a 75-day median time on market — the slowest in the group — but that number describes no actual neighbourhood. Inner-loop ZIPs around Downtown, Montrose and the Galleria match the top suburbs, while the far east side sits in the $1,000s. If you priced off a metro average you are almost certainly wrong in one direction or the other.
| Segment | Median asking rent | Where you see it |
|---|---|---|
| 3BR / 2BA single-family | $1,900 | Spring Branch, Oak Forest, Meyerland |
| 4BR single-family | $2,450 | Energy Corridor, Memorial, Bellaire |
| 2BR apartment / condo | $1,600 | Montrose, Heights, Midtown |
| 3BR townhome | $2,300 | Inner Loop, EaDo, Uptown |
Asking-rent bands reflect current listings and recently executed leases across our Houston portfolio and public market sources; segment medians are compiled from the two, so treat them as an indicative range rather than an appraisal. Headline market figures: Realtor.com Research (Louisiana, July 2026) and Doorstead Houston-metro market data (July 2026); HUD FY2026 Small Area Fair Market Rents for the Houston–The Woodlands–Sugar Land metro. The cards further up this page blend bedrooms and property types across our own portfolio, so they will not match a segment median exactly — your free rental analysis uses live comparables for your specific address and updates this report monthly. Get a free Houston rental analysis →
State law sets the floor. County, parish, city and private covenants stack on top of it — and in Houston the layer that catches owners out is usually the last one.
How we handle this in practice. Flood history is a screening question in Houston, not a footnote. Applicants ask, and the ones who do not ask will hear it from a neighbour. A home that has never flooded and can prove it leases faster and holds its rent — which is why we keep the elevation certificate and the drainage history on file for every property we list.
Regulations change and municipal desks read them differently street by street — always confirm the current requirement for the specific address with the city, parish or county before you rely on it. We run compliance for every property we manage, including registration renewals, annual alarm checks and the paperwork trail that decides a deposit dispute.
Three engagements from our Houston portfolio. Addresses are withheld at the owners' request; figures are as executed.
A dated 1970s ranch house with good bones and bad photos. Repaint, updated fixtures, professional photography, and a rewritten listing that actually named the school zone — nine applications in eight days and a signed lease on day 18.
One side had been at $1,375 for four years. We moved it to market in two steps across two renewals rather than one jump, kept both tenants in place, and lifted the gross rent by 24% without a single vacancy day.
A corporate relocation with a hard start date. We took a slightly longer marketing window to hold out for a corporate-guaranteed 24-month lease instead of a 12-month retail tenant at $2,500 — the extra term was worth more than the monthly difference.
Rent and vacancy for this city, guides by ZIP code, and every monthly report we have published for Houston.
Published monthly since May 2026. Figures are statistical estimates from public sources (Zillow, Realtor.com, RentCast, HUD, U.S. Census ACS) and are general information, not legal, tax or investment advice.
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