A $1,882 current asking-rent index sits 38.2% above the $1,362 ACS median gross rent, making the gap between current listings and occupied renter homes the defining measured tension in ZIP 77073. Zillow’s June 2026 ZORI is a typical observed asking-rent index blended across rental types, whereas the ACS figure describes existing renter households. Against the ZCTA’s $78,592 median household income, the index equals 28.7% of income. The 30% screen produces required annual income of $75,280; that is arithmetic, not advice and not an applicant qualification rule. Meanwhile, 53.7% of surveyed renter households reported spending at least 30% of income on gross rent, so an area-level income screen should not be treated as proof of household-level affordability.
The rent path is positive but has moderated relative to its longer record. Exact same-month Zillow rent history showed a one-year annualized change of 1.8%, a three-year annualized change of 1.9%, and a five-year annualized change of 3.1%. Thus, the latest direction confirms continued growth rather than breaking from the longer path, but it is slower than the five-year pace. The history contains 122 monthly observations and 121 consecutive returns, with 100% stated coverage. Annualized variability was 2.1%, supporting more confidence in the stability of one current rent snapshot than a highly erratic series would. Separately, the maximum drawdown was 1.6%, indicating the largest observed cumulative retreat was limited. Transparent national discovery ranks were 1,613 for momentum, 174 for stability, and 702 for the balanced measure; lower ranks are stronger. These are backward-looking measurements, not forecasts or investment recommendations.
The bedroom figures should be read as modelled estimates rather than measured bedroom rents. Scaling ZIP ZORI through the local HUD bedroom ladder produces estimates of $1,531 for a studio, $1,581 for one bedroom, $1,882 for two bedrooms, $2,534 for three bedrooms, and $3,162 for four bedrooms. The ladder uses HUD’s administrative bedroom-specific standard, not observed asking rent: its two-bedroom benchmark is $1,500. The modelled two-bedroom estimate is therefore 25.5% above that HUD standard. HUD FMR or SAFMR is useful for a standardized bedroom framework, but it is not a listing comp and does not demonstrate what a specific unit can command.
Survey-based housing composition adds caution to the headline rent index. In the matched ACS 2024 five-year survey, the ZCTA had 15,116 housing units, of which 13,974 were occupied and 1,142 were vacant, for a 7.6% vacancy rate. Renter households represented 35.1% of occupied homes. The stock count included 10,374 single-family units and 769 units in large multifamily structures, showing that the housing inventory is not confined to one rental form. The five-digit label 77073 is both Zillow’s ZIP market identifier and a Census ZCTA match; a ZCTA is a statistical area and is not identical to a USPS delivery ZIP. ACS median gross rent is a five-year survey of occupied renter homes and includes selected utilities, so it should not be substituted for current asking rent or for a particular vacant unit’s terms.
Wider benchmarks place the ZIP’s current asking index above each supplied surrounding rent context, but those figures remain broader-geography context rather than ZIP evidence. Houston city context rent was $1,567, Harris County context rent was $1,600, and Houston-The Woodlands-Sugar Land, TX metro context rent was $1,648; each value is named here with its respective city, county, or metro scope. The ZIP’s higher $1,882 asking index may reflect the differing composition and timing of these series, not an automatic premium for any address. The city, county, and metro comparisons are useful orientation points, while the ZIP index, matched ZCTA survey, and HUD ladder must remain distinct evidence universes.
Redfin supplies a separate, direct rolling-three-month ZIP resale observation rather than rental evidence. Its median sold price was $229,948, down 6.1% year over year. The for-sale market recorded 71 homes sold, with 62 days on market at the median. Inventory was 101 homes and months of supply stood at 4.3. Sale-to-list signals were also restrained: the average sale-to-list ratio was 97.6%, and 20.3% of sales closed above list price. These are direct ZIP measures of resale liquidity and pricing behavior, not rental transactions, rental comps, or a broader Houston market reading.
Cross-source signals create a useful tension rather than a single conclusion. The rent series has continued to rise modestly with low variability and limited historical retreat, while Redfin’s median sold price declined and the average sale closed below list. Annualized ZIP ZORI divided by Redfin’s median sold price is a 9.8% screening ratio only. It is not a cap rate, net return, expected return, or property yield, and it does not incorporate property expenses, taxes, insurance, financing, vacancy on a particular home, or lease concessions. The resale evidence therefore challenges any simple interpretation that stable asking-rent history alone settles the current housing-market picture, while the ACS burden measure further limits a broad affordability claim.
Several evidence limits remain material. ZORI summarizes asking rents across rental types, ACS represents surveyed occupied households over five years, HUD is a bedroom-specific administrative standard, and Redfin observes completed resale activity over a rolling three-month window. None identifies the condition, lease terms, utilities, concessions, maintenance obligations, or exact bedroom configuration of a property. Concrete property-level checks should verify the current advertised rent, unit size and bedroom count, included utilities, lease length, concessions, address-level eligibility for the applicable HUD geography, and recently closed comparable sales rather than assuming any area statistic applies unchanged. Does the specific property’s current lease and resale evidence support the broad ZIP-level signals?
","findings":[{"body":"ZIP 77073’s Zillow asking-rent index is $1,882, while the matched ACS median gross rent is $1,362. This is a 38.2% difference, but the measures are not interchangeable: ZORI tracks typical current asking rents across rental types, while ACS summarizes occupied renter homes over a five-year survey period and includes selected utilities.","title":"Current asking rent is materially above the occupied-renter survey median"},{"body":"Exact same-month rent changes were positive over one, three, and five years, at 1.8%, 1.9%, and 3.1% annualized. Low 2.1% annualized variability and a 1.6% maximum drawdown support a relatively stable historical profile. Those measures describe past index behavior only and do not project future rents.","title":"History is steady, though recent growth is slower than the five-year pace"},{"body":"Modelled estimates range from $1,531 for a studio to $3,162 for four bedrooms by scaling the ZIP asking-rent index with the local HUD ladder. HUD’s two-bedroom standard is $1,500, below the $1,882 modelled two-bedroom figure. Neither number establishes the asking rent, utility treatment, or eligibility outcome for a specific unit.","title":"The bedroom ladder is a scaling model, not a set of observed rents"},{"body":"Redfin’s direct ZIP resale observation shows a $229,948 median sold price, down 6.1% year over year, alongside 4.3 months of supply and a 97.6% average sale-to-list ratio. This for-sale evidence does not negate the rent history, but it challenges any conclusion based only on a stable asking-rent index.","title":"Resale evidence is softer than the rent-history signal"}],"risks":["The difference between current Zillow asking rent and ACS gross rent may arise from timing, rental-type mix, occupancy status, and included utilities, so it cannot be assigned to a particular home or lease.","More than half of surveyed renter households reported gross-rent burdens of at least 30%, but that area statistic does not establish whether any prospective tenant can afford or qualify for a specific unit.","The historical rent series has low measured variability and a limited drawdown, yet it remains an index history rather than a guarantee that future asking rents, lease renewals, or achieved rents will follow the same path.","Redfin resale indicators reflect completed home sales in a rolling three-month ZIP observation; they do not measure rental demand, operating costs, unit condition, landlord concessions, or the economics of an individual property."],"qa":[{"a":"The two figures come from different evidence universes. Zillow ZORI is a current typical observed asking-rent index blended across rental types, whereas ACS median gross rent is a five-year survey result for occupied renter homes and includes selected utilities. Differences in timing, household occupancy, unit mix, and utility treatment can all affect the comparison.","q":"Why is Zillow ZORI higher than ACS median gross rent?"},{"a":"No. The studio through four-bedroom amounts are modelled estimates created by scaling ZIP ZORI with the local HUD bedroom ladder. HUD FMR or SAFMR is an administrative, bedroom-specific standard rather than asking-rent evidence. The resulting amounts are useful for standardized comparison, but they are not measured rents for available units.","q":"Are the bedroom rent figures observed market rents?"},{"a":"It divides annualized ZIP asking rent by 30% to calculate an income threshold of $75,280. This is a simple arithmetic screen using the area-level rent index; it is not financial advice, a tenant-budget determination, a lending standard, or a landlord’s applicant qualification rule. Actual household affordability depends on facts not supplied here.","q":"What does the 30% required-income screen mean?"},{"a":"Redfin directly describes the ZIP’s rolling-three-month for-sale market: median sold price, price change, homes sold, days on market, inventory, months of supply, and sale-to-list behavior. It can inform a resale-market comparison with rent data, but it cannot serve as rental comparable evidence or establish an individual property’s operating outcome.","q":"What can the Redfin data confirm about this ZIP?"}],"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 FY2026","pulledAt":"2026-07-26","url":"https://www.huduser.gov/portal/datasets/usps_crosswalk.html"},{"key":"realtor_county","name":"Realtor.com Economic Research — county listing inventory","release":"county inventory 2026-06","pulledAt":"2026-07-28","url":"https://www.realtor.com/research/data/"},{"key":"redfin","name":"Redfin Data Center — inventory, days on market, and price cuts","release":"metro tracker through 2026-05-01","pulledAt":"2026-07-26","url":"https://www.redfin.com/news/data-center/"},{"key":"redfin_zip","name":"Redfin Data Center — ZIP resale activity and supply","release":"ZIP rolling 3 months through 2026-06-30; updated 2026-07-03","pulledAt":"2026-08-12","url":"https://www.redfin.com/news/data-center/"},{"key":"zillow_county","name":"Zillow ZHVI and ZORI — county values and rents","release":"county ZHVI/ZORI 2026-06","pulledAt":"2026-07-26","url":"https://www.zillow.com/research/data/"},{"key":"zillow_zori","name":"Zillow ZORI — metro market rents","release":"Metro_zori_uc_sfrcondomfr_sm_sa_month.csv","pulledAt":"2026-07-26","url":"https://www.zillow.com/research/data/"},{"key":"zillow_zori_city","name":"Zillow ZORI — city market rents","release":"zillow_zori_city.csv","pulledAt":"2026-07-29","url":"https://www.zillow.com/research/data/"},{"key":"zillow_zori_zip","name":"Zillow ZORI — ZIP market rents","release":"ZORI ZIP 2026-06","pulledAt":"2026-08-08","url":"https://www.zillow.com/research/data/"}],"history":[{"period":"2016-05-01","rent":1321.600757},{"period":"2016-06-01","rent":1326.393182},{"period":"2016-07-01","rent":1327.107402},{"period":"2016-08-01","rent":1328.161513},{"period":"2016-09-01","rent":1319.098037},{"period":"2016-10-01","rent":1317.639005},{"period":"2016-11-01","rent":1321.950708},{"period":"2016-12-01","rent":1322.640159},{"period":"2017-01-01","rent":1323.521383},{"period":"2017-02-01","rent":1327.595318},{"period":"2017-03-01","rent":1341.500032},{"period":"2017-04-01","rent":1343.579622},{"period":"2017-05-01","rent":1344.962185},{"period":"2017-06-01","rent":1342.793134},{"period":"2017-07-01","rent":1350.499228},{"period":"2017-08-01","rent":1352.384928},{"period":"2017-09-01","rent":1359.435908},{"period":"2017-10-01","rent":1360.430778},{"period":"2017-11-01","rent":1370.921456},{"period":"2017-12-01","rent":1378.794368},{"period":"2018-01-01","rent":1386.775773},{"period":"2018-02-01","rent":1378.411334},{"period":"2018-03-01","rent":1370.369623},{"period":"2018-04-01","rent":1376.10473},{"period":"2018-05-01","rent":1382.431761},{"period":"2018-06-01","rent":1395.291663},{"period":"2018-07-01","rent":1390.670053},{"period":"2018-08-01","rent":1402.386445},{"period":"2018-09-01","rent":1400.948133},{"period":"2018-10-01","rent":1405.308995},{"period":"2018-11-01","rent":1401.197323},{"period":"2018-12-01","rent":1401.006568},{"period":"2019-01-01","rent":1402.934399},{"period":"2019-02-01","rent":1414.878212},{"period":"2019-03-01","rent":1420.308434},{"period":"2019-04-01","rent":1422.280434},{"period":"2019-05-01","rent":1426.78213},{"period":"2019-06-01","rent":1425.001333},{"period":"2019-07-01","rent":1432.357871},{"period":"2019-08-01","rent":1429.948754},{"period":"2019-09-01","rent":1437.118776},{"period":"2019-10-01","rent":1441.336109},{"period":"2019-11-01","rent":1446.612721},{"period":"2019-12-01","rent":1451.146768},{"period":"2020-01-01","rent":1453.779851},{"period":"2020-02-01","rent":1455.656908},{"period":"2020-03-01","rent":1448.413253},{"period":"2020-04-01","rent":1458.578002},{"period":"2020-05-01","rent":1463.872006},{"period":"2020-06-01","rent":1469.63301},{"period":"2020-07-01","rent":1464.995014},{"period":"2020-08-01","rent":1489.028412},{"period":"2020-09-01","rent":1496.578453},{"period":"2020-10-01","rent":1515.165688},{"period":"2020-11-01","rent":1516.617526},{"period":"2020-12-01","rent":1535.567905},{"period":"2021-01-01","rent":1541.647493},{"period":"2021-02-01","rent":1555.175443},{"period":"2021-03-01","rent":1560.593876},{"period":"2021-04-01","rent":1577.977573},{"period":"2021-05-01","rent":1589.131154},{"period":"2021-06-01","rent":1612.61972},{"period":"2021-07-01","rent":1631.115827},{"period":"2021-08-01","rent":1624.647059},{"period":"2021-09-01","rent":1623.082665},{"period":"2021-10-01","rent":1614.025464},{"period":"2021-11-01","rent":1638.426113},{"period":"2021-12-01","rent":1655.093566},{"period":"2022-01-01","rent":1697.672833},{"period":"2022-02-01","rent":1711.842355},{"period":"2022-03-01","rent":1722.86547},{"period":"2022-04-01","rent":1705.319619},{"period":"2022-05-01","rent":1704.140131},{"period":"2022-06-01","rent":1716.789021},{"period":"2022-07-01","rent":1733.043101},{"period":"2022-08-01","rent":1754.892984},{"period":"2022-09-01","rent":1753.627536},{"period":"2022-10-01","rent":1761.872416},{"period":"2022-11-01","rent":1757.463434},{"period":"2022-12-01","rent":1755.850866},{"period":"2023-01-01","rent":1748.585587},{"period":"2023-02-01","rent":1740.917944},{"period":"2023-03-01","rent":1750.961948},{"period":"2023-04-01","rent":1764.206551},{"period":"2023-05-01","rent":1786.138289},{"period":"2023-06-01","rent":1778.823169},{"period":"2023-07-01","rent":1782.48828},{"period":"2023-08-01","rent":1770.151159},{"period":"2023-09-01","rent":1790.144104},{"period":"2023-10-01","rent":1789.527266},{"period":"2023-11-01","rent":1798.297404},{"period":"2023-12-01","rent":1791.664895},{"period":"2024-01-01","rent":1785.427414},{"period":"2024-02-01","rent":1793.093894},{"period":"2024-03-01","rent":1800.5323},{"period":"2024-04-01","rent":1821.832547},{"period":"2024-05-01","rent":1814.607207},{"period":"2024-06-01","rent":1815.583883},{"period":"2024-07-01","rent":1800.11726},{"period":"2024-08-01","rent":1820.798653},{"period":"2024-09-01","rent":1826.716905},{"period":"2024-10-01","rent":1846.340929},{"period":"2024-11-01","rent":1848.734748},{"period":"2024-12-01","rent":1866.592654},{"period":"2025-01-01","rent":1862.781748},{"period":"2025-02-01","rent":1854.752803},{"period":"2025-03-01","rent":1851.542819},{"period":"2025-04-01","rent":1842.435204},{"period":"2025-05-01","rent":1854.692835},{"period":"2025-06-01","rent":1849.45362},{"period":"2025-07-01","rent":1862.137377},{"period":"2025-08-01","rent":1854.848974},{"period":"2025-09-01","rent":1847.9347},{"period":"2025-10-01","rent":1839.172186},{"period":"2025-11-01","rent":1840.561989},{"period":"2025-12-01","rent":1837.625378},{"period":"2026-01-01","rent":1851.151143},{"period":"2026-02-01","rent":1862.358975},{"period":"2026-03-01","rent":1866.954371},{"period":"2026-04-01","rent":1869.798888},{"period":"2026-05-01","rent":1868.29812},{"period":"2026-06-01","rent":1882.044974}],"historySummary":{"pointCount":122,"firstPeriod":"2016-05-01","latestPeriod":"2026-06-01","coverageMonths":122,"coverageRatio":1,"changes":{"1":{"years":1,"startPeriod":"2025-06-01","endPeriod":"2026-06-01","startRent":1849.45362,"endRent":1882.044974,"change":0.017622152644195532,"cagr":0.017622152644195532},"3":{"years":3,"startPeriod":"2023-06-01","endPeriod":"2026-06-01","startRent":1778.823169,"endRent":1882.044974,"change":0.05802814287494806,"cagr":0.018980187582477104},"5":{"years":5,"startPeriod":"2021-06-01","endPeriod":"2026-06-01","startRent":1612.61972,"endRent":1882.044974,"change":0.16707302450698047,"cagr":0.03138213893243713}},"maxDrawdown":-0.015518798886262064,"annualizedVolatility":0.020665530890053217,"consecutiveReturnCount":121}}