Harris County

Harris County sits at a gross rent-to-price ratio of 6.8%, which lands it squarely in the middle of the cash-flow versus appreciation spectrum, but the model underwrite tells a harder story than that headline ratio suggests. At a $282,169 purchase price with 20% down, a 6.85% rate produces a $1,479 monthly mortgage. Add $560 in estimated expenses and you get negative $439 in monthly cash flow and a cash-on-cash return of -8.12%. The 4.42% cap rate confirms the asset is priced for something other than yield. Home prices are down 2.34% year-over-year, so you are not currently being compensated on the appreciation side either. The affordability index of 70 and overall score of 56 out of 100 (50th national percentile, 93rd out of 243 Texas counties) paint a picture of a market in the middle of a repricing, not a clear buy signal in either direction.

The cash-flow score of 68 is the market's best attribute, and it reflects relative affordability compared to coastal metros rather than actual positive leverage at current rates. This market suits a buyer who is willing to underwrite very carefully at the submarket level, targeting assets that deviate meaningfully from the median, or an operator who can force income through value-add renovation. A straight buy-and-hold at median price and median rent, financed at today's rates, does not pencil without a material rent bump or price concession. The appreciation score of 38 reflects recent price softness, so buyers banking on near-term price recovery are taking on directional risk the data does not currently support. The stability score of 50 is neither a green light nor a red flag on its own, but it underscores that Harris is not a set-and-forget market at this moment.

On the economic side, no employer or anchor data was provided for this county, so that analysis is omitted here. What the population figure does tell you is that at 4.73 million residents, Harris is one of the largest counties in the country by population, which supports rental demand at scale. A market this large has enough transaction volume and tenant depth that absorption of a well-priced rental is generally not the primary risk.

Property taxes and insurance are a real underwriting issue in Harris County. The state-average effective property tax rate of 1.80% is high enough to deserve its own line on your underwrite. At a $282,169 purchase price, that translates to $5,079 in annual property taxes, and when you add $1,411 in annual insurance, you arrive at $541 per month in combined tax and insurance carry before you touch mortgage principal, interest, or operating expenses. That $541 figure, against a $1,600 median rent, means over a third of gross rent is consumed by just those two line items. Texas has no state income tax, which is a well-known offset, but investors accustomed to lower-tax states should not underestimate the drag here. The data note is worth heeding: the 1.80% is a state-average estimate, and Harris County's actual township and municipal utility district rates have historically run higher in many areas, so verify at the parcel level before finalizing your model.

The central risk in Harris is concentration, not in the sense of a single employer, but in the sense of weather and insurance exposure. The county's insurance rate of 0.50% of value annually is already baked into the model above, but that figure can increase sharply for properties in flood zones, which are widespread across the Houston metro. Investors should treat the provided insurance estimate as a floor and verify flood zone status and separate flood insurance premiums for any specific asset. That additional carry cost could materially worsen an already-negative cash-on-cash return.

The neighbor comparison is instructive. Robertson, Karnes, De Witt, Bosque, and Duval counties all score within one point of Harris overall (55 to 56), but their median prices range from $75,098 in Duval County to $259,047 in Robertson County. Lower price points in those rural counties may imply higher gross yields, but they also reflect thinner rental markets and less tenant depth. An investor should choose Harris over its scored peers when deal volume, financing accessibility, and tenant pool depth matter more than raw yield, and when the strategy involves value-add execution in specific submarkets rather than passive income at median metrics. If your strategy is a single-family cash-flow play at the lowest acquisition cost, Duval at $75,098 median demands a closer look, though the liquidity and exit options there are considerably narrower. Harris earns its place when scale, market depth, and long-term optionality are the priorities, not when the spreadsheet needs to work at the median.