ZIP 77090’s June 2026 Zillow Observed Rent Index is $1,046 per month, down 2.9% from the same month a year earlier. The five-digit label is both a Zillow ZIP market identifier and a Census ZCTA match; a ZCTA is a statistical area, not the same thing as a USPS delivery ZIP. ZORI is a typical observed asking-rent index blended across rental types, rather than a record of every listing or a utility-inclusive tenant payment. Against that ZIP figure, Houston city context, Harris County context, and Houston–The Woodlands–Sugar Land, TX metro context all show higher asking-rent indices; those city, county, and metro values are wider-area context, not ZIP measurements.
The recent decline extends a cooling sequence rather than confirming the longer path. Exact same-month change was negative 2.9% over one year and negative 1.6% over three years, while the five-year comparison remained positive 1.8%. Annualized monthly-return variability reaches 2.8%, so a single current ZORI reading deserves measured confidence rather than being treated as a fixed market clearing price. Separately, the deepest observed peak-to-trough decline was 8.2%, a meaningful backward-looking drawdown for an index now below its earlier level. Coverage is 100% across 122 observations and 121 consecutive monthly returns. The transparent national discovery ranks were 2,852 for momentum, 1,251 for stability, and 2,580 for the balanced measure among history-eligible ZIPs, where a lower rank is higher. These are retrospective measurements, not forecasts or investment recommendations.
The matched Census ZCTA’s ACS 2024 five-year survey reported median gross rent of $1,255 for occupied renter homes. That survey measure includes selected utilities and describes households already occupying rentals, making it materially different from Zillow’s current asking-rent index. HUD’s applicable two-bedroom FMR/SAFMR standard is $1,540 per month. It is an administrative, bedroom-specific standard rather than asking rent, tenant-paid rent, or evidence of a lease offer. The gap among the three sources should therefore be read as a scope difference first: current blended asks, a multiyear survey median of occupied renter homes, and a program standard answer different questions.
The bedroom figures are modelled estimates created by scaling ZIP ZORI with the local HUD bedroom ladder; they are not measured bedroom rents. The resulting monthly ladder is $849 for a studio, $876 for a one-bedroom, $1,046 for a two-bedroom, $1,406 for a three-bedroom, and $1,752 for a four-bedroom. The underlying HUD standards run from $1,250 for a studio to $2,580 for a four-bedroom. This method preserves local HUD size relationships around the ZIP-wide asking-rent index, but it cannot establish what a currently advertised unit of any size, condition, utility treatment, or lease term actually asks.
On a simple income screen, the ZIP’s $50,903 ACS median household income exceeds the $41,840 annual income mathematically associated with paying the current ZORI at 30% of income. The asking-rent-to-income calculation is 24.7%, but this is arithmetic only, not advice and not an applicant qualification rule. The survey’s burden evidence points in a different direction: 7,268 of 11,246 renter households, or 64.6%, reported paying at least 30% of income toward rent. That share exceeds the 54.1% Houston city-context measure. The apparent tension is important: a ZIP-wide current asking-rent screen can fall below the threshold while a substantial share of occupied renter households reports burden. Neither measure proves affordability or payment stress for a particular unit or household.
ACS ZCTA housing data indicate 18,553 housing units, a 14.2% vacancy rate, and a renter share of 70.7% among occupied homes. The stock includes 5,405 units in single-family structures and 4,166 units in large multifamily structures, showing that neither form alone represents the full housing base. These are area-level survey estimates of stock and occupancy, not a contemporaneous count of rentable vacancies, unit quality, concessions, or tenant turnover. A higher aggregate vacancy measure can coexist with unavailable, unsuitable, differently priced, or otherwise noncomparable units, so it should not be used as proof that a particular rental is available or negotiable.
Redfin’s direct rolling-three-month ZIP resale observation belongs strictly to the for-sale market. Median sold price was $254,942, down 9.1% year over year; 65 homes sold, with a median 67 days on market. Inventory stood at 121 homes and months of supply were 5.7, meaning the observed resale inventory represented more time at the then-current sales pace than the 4.2-month metro-context measure. Sale-to-list evidence also reads as restrained, with an average 96.4% sale-to-list ratio and 14.3% of sales above list. The lower resale price direction is consistent with the ZIP’s rent cooling, but it does not transform resale data into rental transactions. Annualized ZIP ZORI divided by median sold price is a 4.9% cross-source screening ratio only, not a cap rate, property yield, net return, or expected return. Its seemingly lower price basis does not resolve the renter-burden evidence.
Key limits arise from timing, aggregation, and source design. ZORI is a blended asking-rent index; ACS is a five-year survey; HUD is an administrative standard; and Redfin summarizes completed ZIP resale activity. None identifies the rent, utility obligation, occupancy cost, concessions, condition, or financing of a specific property. Property-level review should therefore verify bedroom count, advertised rent, utility inclusions, concession terms, lease duration, availability date, condition, and whether comparable listings match the same unit type. For a sale comparison, verify the actual sale date, list history, property condition, and whether the home is a meaningful physical and tenure match. Those checks determine whether broad ZIP signals are relevant to the individual property question.
","findings":[{"body":"Current ZIP asking rent declined from the same month a year earlier, and the three-year comparison also remains negative. The five-year result is still positive, however, so the recent direction represents a break from the longer expansionary path rather than evidence that the entire historical period was weak. History describes prior index movement only.","title":"Cooling is visible, but the long history is not uniformly negative"},{"body":"Zillow ZORI represents blended observed asking rents, ACS gross rent summarizes occupied renter households and includes selected utilities, and HUD FMR/SAFMR is a bedroom-specific administrative standard. Their differences are informative about source scope, timing, and construction, but none can be treated as a direct substitute for another or as a unit-specific lease quote.","title":"Rent figures should not be substituted for one another"},{"body":"The income screen based on current asking rent and median household income falls below the arithmetic 30% threshold, yet the ACS survey reports that a large majority of renter households pay at least that share of income toward rent. This contrast cautions against treating a ZIP median calculation as a statement about individual household affordability.","title":"Area-level affordability screens conflict with reported burden"},{"body":"The direct ZIP resale observation shows a year-over-year median sold-price decline, longer marketing time, supply above the metro-context figure, and average sales below list. Those signals are directionally consistent with rental cooling, but they describe completed home sales rather than rental transactions. The rent-to-price figure is useful only as a cross-source screening ratio.","title":"Resale conditions align with cooling but remain a separate market"}],"risks":["The current rent index blends rental types and may not match the bedroom count, building form, condition, utility treatment, lease term, or concession structure of a specific available unit.","ACS estimates are multiyear survey measures for a statistical ZCTA and carry sampling uncertainty, so they should not be read as a current census of tenant incomes, rents, vacancies, or burden.","HUD bedroom standards are administrative benchmarks rather than market asking rents, and the bedroom ladder derived from them is a modelled scaling exercise rather than observed rent evidence.","Redfin resale data summarize for-sale activity over a rolling period. Sold prices, marketing time, inventory, and sale-to-list outcomes cannot establish rental demand, lease pricing, or economics for a rental property."],"qa":[{"a":"The label serves two matching purposes in this packet: Zillow reports a ZIP market identifier, while ACS data are reported for the matched Census ZCTA. A ZCTA is a Census statistical area created to approximate ZIP geography; it is not identical to a USPS delivery ZIP and should not be treated as a precise service-area boundary.","q":"Why does the report distinguish ZIP 77090 from the Census ZCTA?"},{"a":"No. The studio through four-bedroom figures are modelled monthly estimates. They scale the ZIP-wide Zillow asking-rent index according to the local HUD bedroom ladder. That construction can organize size relationships, but it does not measure current listings, concessions, utilities, unit condition, or rents for any particular bedroom category.","q":"Are the bedroom rent figures observed rents for available apartments or houses?"},{"a":"The history has complete reported coverage, which supports continuity of the measurement series, but its observed monthly-return variability and prior drawdown show that the index has moved materially over time. The current figure is therefore a useful dated benchmark, not a stable guarantee, forecast, or substitute for reviewing active comparable listings.","q":"How much confidence should a reader place in the current ZORI snapshot?"},{"a":"It is simply annualized ZIP ZORI divided by the direct ZIP median sold price from Redfin. Because the numerator is a blended asking-rent index and the denominator is a resale median, it is a cross-source screening calculation. It excludes operating costs, financing, taxes, maintenance, vacancy experience, property characteristics, and transaction-specific facts.","q":"What does the rent-to-price screening ratio mean here?"}],"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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