At 77025, the sharpest measured tension is a soft resale reading alongside a rent index that has only edged down. Redfin’s direct rolling-three-month ZIP resale observation places median sold price at $479,391, down 17.4% year over year, while the current ZIP asking-rent index is $1,442, off 1.0%. Annualizing that index and dividing by the sold-price median produces a 3.61% screening ratio. It is a cross-source screen only—not a cap rate, net return, expected return, or property yield. The larger resale decline may challenge the relatively modest rent cooling, but neither series establishes a property-level relationship.
The backward Zillow rent record describes a cooling interruption rather than a uniformly weak longer path. The one-year exact same-month annualized change is -1.0%, compared with a three-year change of 0.8% and a five-year change of 2.6%. Thus, recent direction breaks from the positive longer-run measures, although it does not erase them. Coverage is 100% across 122 observations and 121 consecutive monthly returns. Monthly-return variability annualizes to 3.0%, meaning a single current rent snapshot deserves moderate rather than absolute confidence. Separately, the maximum recorded drawdown reached 4.1%, showing that declines have occurred within the history. Transparent national discovery ranks among history-eligible ZIPs are 2,500 for momentum, 1,667 for stability, and 2,516 for the balanced measure; lower ranks are stronger. These are backward-looking measurements, not forecasts or investment recommendations.
Resale liquidity provides a second, separate view of the ZIP’s current tension. In Redfin’s direct rolling-three-month ZIP resale evidence, 95 homes sold with median marketing time of 39 days, inventory of 119 homes, and 3.8 months of supply. The average sale-to-list result was 97.6%, while 17.4% of sales closed above list and 34.5% went off market within two weeks. Those signals show transactions still occurred, but the below-list average and sold-price decline do not simply confirm rent resilience. Redfin describes for-sale transactions, not rental transactions, so its price, supply, and marketing measures cannot be used as rental comparables or as evidence about any particular lease.
The rent figures come from different evidence universes and should not be substituted for one another. Zillow’s June 2026 ZIP asking-rent index is a typical observed asking-rent index blended across rental types. The matched Census ZCTA’s ACS 2024 five-year survey reports median gross rent of $1,547 with a $98 margin of error; it covers occupied renter homes and includes selected utilities. Zillow asking rent is therefore 93.2% of that survey measure. A ZCTA is a statistical area and is not identical to a USPS delivery ZIP. HUD’s two-bedroom standard is $1,760, placing the ZIP asking index at 81.9% of that administrative bedroom-specific standard, which is not asking rent.
The bedroom view is a modelling exercise, not a set of measured bedroom rents. Scaling ZIP ZORI through the local HUD bedroom ladder produces modelled monthly estimates of $1,172 for a studio, $1,213 for one bedroom, $1,442 for two bedrooms, $1,942 for three bedrooms, and $2,417 for four bedrooms. The ladder makes the difference between unit sizes visible, but it does not establish the actual advertised price, utilities, condition, concessions, or availability of a unit with that bedroom count. These estimates should remain labelled as modelled ZIP figures rather than observed bedroom rents.
The 30% required-income screen is arithmetic, not advice and not an applicant qualification rule. Paying the current ZIP asking-rent index at 30% of gross income implies required annual income of $57,680. That is below the ACS median household income of $81,008, and the annualized asking-rent-to-income screen is 21.4%. However, 47.8% of surveyed renter households in the ZCTA report gross-rent burdens of at least 30%. That burden statistic is evidence about surveyed occupied renter homes, not proof that a specific prospective tenant, household, building, or unit is affordable or burdened.
Housing composition and vacancy add context without identifying conditions at a particular property. The matched ACS ZCTA reports 1,456 vacant units, a 9.1% vacancy rate, and 985 units classified as vacant for rent. Renters account for 59.4% of occupied housing, while both single-family and large multifamily structures are represented in the stock. The availability of vacant-for-rent units may be relevant to aggregate choice and asking-rent competition, but vacancy does not prove that a given listing is available, comparable, discounted, or suitable. Nor does an area-wide renter share describe tenure, maintenance, or lease terms for one building.
Wider comparisons place the ZIP’s asking-rent index below all three supplied contexts: Houston city context is $1,567, Harris County context is $1,600, and Houston-The Woodlands-Sugar Land, TX metro context is $1,648. These city, county, and metro figures are context only, not substitutes for ZIP observations. Before using the snapshot for a specific property, verify the active asking price, bedroom count, lease term, included utilities, concessions, availability date, and physical condition. For a resale-linked question, also reconcile the property’s own sale history and listing status with Redfin’s ZIP-level aggregation. The central evidence question is whether those property-specific facts align with the ZIP’s modest rent cooling while the resale median has fallen more sharply.
","findings":[{"body":"The Zillow ZIP asking-rent index is $1,442 in June 2026, down 1.0% over one year. Its exact same-month three-year and five-year annualized changes remain positive at 0.8% and 2.6%. This creates a measured cooling break from the longer path rather than evidence of a continuous multi-year decline.","title":"Rent cooling is recent, not the full historical pattern"},{"body":"The history has complete coverage across 122 observations, supporting the reliability of the calculation period. Still, annualized monthly-return variability is 3.0%, and the maximum drawdown is 4.1%. A current ZIP rent index is therefore useful as an aggregate benchmark, but it should not be treated as a fixed quotation for an individual property.","title":"Snapshot confidence is moderated by observed rent movement"},{"body":"ACS median gross rent of $1,547 is a five-year survey measure of occupied renter homes and includes selected utilities, unlike Zillow’s asking-rent index. HUD’s $1,760 two-bedroom standard is an administrative bedroom-specific benchmark, not an observed asking rent. The ZIP’s modelled bedroom ladder scales Zillow ZORI through HUD relationships rather than measuring actual bedroom rents.","title":"Survey rent, asking rent, and HUD standards answer different questions"},{"body":"Redfin’s direct rolling-three-month ZIP resale observation shows a $479,391 median sold price, down 17.4% year over year, with 3.8 months of supply and a 97.6% average sale-to-list ratio. Those for-sale signals are weaker than the one-year rent change alone might suggest, but they cannot establish rental pricing, property income, or returns.","title":"Resale evidence challenges the milder rent decline"}],"risks":["The ZIP asking-rent index blends rental types and does not identify a unit’s condition, lease term, utility treatment, concessions, availability, furnishing, or effective rent after any landlord incentive.","ACS measures surveyed occupied renter homes in a matched ZCTA over five years, so its median gross rent and burden figures are not contemporaneous advertised rents or household-level affordability determinations.","The bedroom figures are modelled by scaling ZIP ZORI with the local HUD ladder; they should not be used as evidence that any currently listed studio, one-bedroom, or larger unit rents at that amount.","Redfin’s resale measures are direct ZIP for-sale observations over a rolling three-month window, not rental transactions; the rent-price screening ratio omits operating costs, financing, taxes, insurance, and property-specific conditions."],"qa":[{"a":"The measures have different universes and construction. Zillow reports a ZIP-level typical observed asking-rent index blended across rental types, while ACS reports median gross rent for surveyed occupied renter homes in the matched ZCTA over five years and includes selected utilities. The difference is informative, but it is not a like-for-like price comparison.","q":"Why is Zillow asking rent lower than ACS median gross rent here?"},{"a":"They are ZIP-level modelled monthly estimates created by scaling the overall Zillow asking-rent index with the local HUD bedroom ladder. They can help frame relative size differences, but they are never measured bedroom rents. A reader should verify the listed bedroom count, active asking price, utilities, concessions, condition, and lease terms for a specific unit.","q":"How should the modelled bedroom estimates be used?"},{"a":"The -1.0% one-year exact same-month measure shows recent cooling. Positive three-year and five-year annualized changes of 0.8% and 2.6% show that the longer backward-looking path remains positive. Because variability is 3.0% and the series experienced a 4.1% maximum drawdown, the current decline should be read as a measured recent change rather than a forecast.","q":"What does the one-year decline mean relative to the three-year and five-year history?"},{"a":"Redfin’s 17.4% median sold-price decline is direct ZIP resale evidence and can challenge the less severe one-year Zillow rent decline. However, sold-price, inventory, supply, days-on-market, and sale-to-list measures describe for-sale transactions rather than rental transactions. The 3.61% annualized-rent-to-price figure is only a cross-source screening ratio, not a cap rate or property return.","q":"How should the Redfin sold-price decline be interpreted alongside rent data?"}],"sources":[{"key":"apartment_list_time_on_market","name":"Apartment List Time on Market — listing liquidity","release":"Apartment List 2026-07","pulledAt":"2026-08-08","url":"https://www.apartmentlist.com/research/category/data-rent-estimates"},{"key":"apartment_list_vacancy","name":"Apartment List Vacancy Index — rental vacancy","release":"Apartment List 2026-07","pulledAt":"2026-08-08","url":"https://www.apartmentlist.com/research/apartment-list-vacancy-index-methodology"},{"key":"census_zcta_facts","name":"Census ACS five-year — ZCTA housing and income","release":"ACS 2024 5-year ZCTA","pulledAt":"2026-08-08","url":"https://api.census.gov/data/2024/acs/acs5.html"},{"key":"hud_zip","name":"HUD USPS crosswalk and Small Area FMRs — ZIP rent fallback","release":"ZIP-CBSA 2025Q4 + SAFMR 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