If you’ve been paying attention to real estate headlines this summer, you’ve probably noticed they can’t seem to agree on much. One says the market is slowing down. The next says prices are climbing. Someone on the news is still predicting a crash, and meanwhile, your neighbor just sold their house in a week.

So what’s actually going on here in Texas?

We pulled the latest data from the Texas Real Estate Research Center at Texas A&M to cut through some of that noise. And the real story this summer isn’t the one the headlines are telling. It’s not a crash, and it’s not a boom. It’s that the statewide number is hiding three very different markets, and which one you’re standing in changes everything about your next move.

Prices are drifting down, gently. Let’s start with the honest version. Across Texas, home prices were down 0.9 percent from last year, and April’s median sale price was $335,000, below April of last year’s $337,500. In fact, statewide home prices have remained below year-ago levels for 11 consecutive months. Now, before anyone panics: a sub-1% dip is not a correction, and it’s certainly not a crash. What it is, is the end of the runaway appreciation that priced so many people out during the pandemic years. Prices are easing, not collapsing. For buyers, that’s genuine breathing room. For sellers, it means the market is still there, but it rewards realism.

Rates are better than they were a year ago. The 30-year fixed mortgage rate, the interest rate on the most common home loan locked in for the life of a 30-year mortgage, has been running in the low-6% range. Recent DFW-area reporting has rates holding at 6.11%, down roughly 68 basis points year-over-year, the most accommodating backdrop buyers have seen in twelve months. That might not sound dramatic, but every fraction of a point changes what someone can comfortably afford on a monthly payment, and that improvement has been enough to get people off the sidelines. Nobody expects a return to 3% anytime soon. But the direction of travel has been one of the more encouraging developments of 2026.

There are more homes to choose from, and here’s the part most people miss. Inventory has grown significantly across Texas. Available listings are on track to reach new cycle highs, with statewide inventory now well above pre-pandemic norms. But the reason matters, and it’s not what most people assume. The increase in inventory appears to be driven less by a surge in new seller participation and more by homes taking longer to sell. That’s a different market than one flooded with eager new sellers. It means homes are accumulating, and well-positioned homes are still moving while overpriced ones sit and wait. Pricing correctly has never mattered more.

Now here’s where it gets interesting, because if you only look at the statewide numbers, you’ll completely miss what’s happening in your own backyard.

Austin corrected the hardest. Of all the major Texas metros, Austin has taken the sharpest adjustment. The April year-over-year price decline widened to 3.3 percent, up from 2.7 percent in February and March, and zooming out further, Austin has dropped roughly 24.5% from its May 2022 peak of $550,000, the steepest decline among major Texas metros, with the metro median now near $440,000 and inventory around 5.5 months of supply. Sellers there are adjusting accordingly: April’s median seller price reduction in Austin was $19,000, about 5.4 percent of the initial listing price. If you’re a buyer who was priced out of Austin two years ago, this is the most negotiating room you’ve had in a long time. If you’re an Austin seller, the number in your head from 2022 is not the number today.

DFW is the complicated middle, and it’s really two markets. Dallas-Fort Worth is holding up better than Austin, with a year-over-year decline of 1.3 percent in Dallas. But the metro is genuinely split by segment. Resale inventory sits at 6.09 months of supply, the upper edge of balanced territory, with sellers still capturing 95.0% of original list price at an average of 56 days on market, while new construction sits tighter at a 4.17-month supply. And there’s a bright spot worth knowing about: Fort Worth-Arlington is beginning to show early signs of recovery, with year-over-year declines narrowing to 0.4 percent from 1.1 percent in March. Median seller price reductions in DFW ran $12,500, about 3 percent of the initial listing price, the most modest of the major metros. Translation: DFW sellers are giving up less ground than their Austin counterparts, and Fort Worth may have already turned the corner.

San Antonio is softening while inventory builds. San Antonio posted a year-over-year price decline of 1.9 percent, the steepest among Dallas, Houston, and San Antonio, with median seller price reductions of $15,000, or about 4.6 percent of initial listing price. At the same time, active inventory increased year over year across the major metros, led by San Antonio and Houston. That combination, more homes and softer prices, is straightforwardly good news if you’re buying. If you’re selling in San Antonio, you’re competing against a growing pool of listings, and the homes that price right from day one are the ones that move.

The broader economy is confusing, but real estate isn’t. This is the part that trips a lot of people up. Consumer confidence is low. Energy prices have been climbing. Global conflicts are creating uncertainty in unpredictable ways. And yet the stock market keeps hitting new highs. The signals seem contradictory, and that makes people hesitant. But through all of that noise, Texas real estate hasn’t done anything dramatic. Homes are still selling, prices are easing modestly rather than falling off a cliff, and the fundamentals that drive housing here, strong population growth, a deep job market, and steady demand, haven’t changed. Sold homes spent an average of 70 days on the market in April, down from 79 days in March. That’s a market that’s working, just at a more reasonable pace than the frenzy we all remember.

Those are the numbers, and they paint a clear enough picture. But look at what we just walked through: Austin down 3.3%, DFW down 1.3% with Fort Worth already recovering, San Antonio down 1.9% with inventory climbing. Three metros, three completely different situations, all averaged into one statewide figure that describes none of them precisely.
Your neighborhood, your price range, and your specific situation can look very different again from even those metro-level headlines.

If you want to know what the real numbers look like where you are, we’re happy to walk you through it so you’re making decisions based on what’s actually happening, not what someone said on the news. Call or text us at 888-333-4838, or visit christopherwatters.com. We’d genuinely love to help you make your next move with a clear picture of your own market.