First-Time Home Buyer in Katy, TX: Budgets, School Districts, MUD Taxes, and the Programs That Apply — A Houston Real Estate Broker’s Guide

Most first-time buyers who call me have already picked Katy and don’t yet know three things about it: a Katy address usually isn’t inside the City of Katy, it can be zoned to any of six school districts, and two houses at the same price can carry tax bills that differ by a third. None of that should put you off. It means the address matters more than the floor plan, and it is exactly the work I do for my clients before we tour. A first-time home buyer in Katy in 2026 is usually shopping between about $270,000 and $400,000, and the ZIP code decides which end of that range you land in. The median sale price was $270,000 in 77449, $335,000 in 77493 and $394,000 in 77450 in the twelve months to October 17, 2026, per HAR MLS. If you are touring in 77493, most of what you will see is new construction. The rest of this post is the checklist I work through with each first-time buyer who has settled on Katy, and the last section is how we would work it together.

Figures as of October 2026. Market medians are my HAR MLS pulls of October 17, 2026, one per ZIP code; tax rates are the 2026 adopted rates on the Harris, Fort Bend and Waller County appraisal records where posted, and 2025 rates where noted; school ratings are the Texas Education Agency’s 2026 accountability ratings; program rules were read on the programs’ own pages on October 26, 2026. I refresh this post when new HAR figures, TEA ratings and the 2027 tax rates are published.

I’m Kevan Pewitt, a REALTOR® and the broker-owner of Houston Prime Realty, licensed as a Texas real estate broker since 1989. The order of a purchase, from the buyer representation agreement and the pre-approval through the option period and closing, is the same anywhere in Texas; I laid it out in the first-time home buyer’s roadmap for Houston. This post covers only what changes when the address says Katy. If you are still weighing Katy against Cypress, Katy vs Cypress is the side-by-side; this is the Katy twin of my first-time home buyer’s guide to Cypress.

If you’d rather skip the homework: tell me your approved budget, the district you want and where you drive to work, and before our first tour I’ll have the school zoning, the full tax rate and the flood panel checked on every home on the list, with a real monthly figure beside each one. That first conversation carries no obligation; call or text me at (281) 500-7077. The details of how I work a first purchase in Katy are near the end of this post.

A Katy address is usually not in the City of Katy: three counties, six school districts

The City of Katy is about 15 square miles where Harris, Waller and Fort Bend counties meet, and the city’s own utility page says plainly that a Katy mailing address does not mean you are inside the city limits. The four Katy ZIP codes are 77449, 77450, 77493 and 77494. The City of Katy holds 8,886 of the 134,239 recorded lots in those four ZIP codes on the 2026 appraisal rolls. Most other Katy addresses are unincorporated county land, served by a municipal utility district (a MUD) for water and sewer and an emergency services district for fire protection; part of 77449 and 77450 is inside the City of Houston instead. The city publishes an Am I a Resident? map, and the faster check is the parcel record: if City of Katy appears as a taxing unit on the HCAD, FBCAD or Waller CAD record, the house is in the city.

For what daily life in Katy is like, my guide to living in Katy, TX covers the parks, the master-planned communities and the drive to work; the short version is that the Energy Corridor is 15 to 30 minutes east on I-10 depending on where in Katy you live.

What a first budget buys in Katy right now

Katy is four ZIP codes with four different markets, so I never quote one Katy median. The median sale price in 77493 was $335,000 in the twelve months to October 17, 2026, per HAR MLS, and the median year built of the homes that sold there was 2025. Here is each ZIP from the same pulls. With 5.5 months of supply in 77449 and 77493 against 3.9 in 77450, a buyer shopping 77449 or 77493 has more room to ask for closing-cost help and repairs right now than one shopping 77450.

ZIP	Median sale price (12 months to Oct 17, 2026, HAR MLS)	Months of supply	Median days on market	Median year built (homes sold)	What a first budget buys
77449 (north Katy, Harris County)	$270,000	5.5	27	2004	A 1,900-square-foot resale from the 1990s or 2000s in Raintree Village, Lakes of Bridgewater or Morton Ranch; the lowest entry price in Katy, and the ZIP where about 44% of the area is Cy-Fair ISD rather than Katy ISD
77493 (northwest Katy, Harris and Waller counties)	$335,000	5.5	32	2025	A new 2,200-square-foot build in Sunterra, Anniston, Elyson or Cane Island, or 2010s resale in Ventana Lakes and Katy Manor; the new-construction ZIP, with the highest combined tax rates in Katy
77450 (central Katy, Harris and Fort Bend counties)	$394,000	3.9	17	1992	An established Katy ISD neighborhood such as Nottingham Country, Memorial Parkway, Cimarron or the older sections of Cinco Ranch, where the utility districts are decades into retiring their bonds; the tightest supply and the fastest sales of the four
77494 (south and west Katy, mostly Fort Bend County)	$486,500	4.5	23	2011	The ceiling a first budget runs into; the entry homes here are the smaller plans in Firethorne, Tamarron and Pine Mill Ranch, some of them zoned to Lamar CISD

In payment terms: at the 7.32% average 30-year rate Freddie Mac reported for the week of October 22, 2026, a $335,000 purchase at 5% down comes to about $2,186 a month in principal and interest. Taxes and insurance sit on top through escrow, and the tax line is what changes most from one Katy house to the next. For the current listings in each band, I keep four living roundups: what $350,000 buys in Katy, $350,000 to $400,000, $400,000 to $450,000 and $450,000 to $500,000.

Is every Katy address in Katy ISD? Six districts, one ZIP map

No. Katy ISD covers most of the area, and the Texas Education Agency rated it B (88) for 2026, but the Census Bureau’s school-district boundaries show five other districts inside the Katy ZIP codes:

• Cypress-Fairbanks ISD, rated B (86), covers about 44% of 77449; Jasmine Heights, Bear Creek, Brenwood and Plantation Lakes are Cy-Fair.
• Royal ISD, rated D (64), covers about 10% of 77493, including Freeman Ranch and part of Sunterra. A Sunterra address can be Katy ISD or Royal ISD depending on the section.
• Lamar CISD, rated B (87), covers about 8% of 77494: most of Tamarron, the Lamar side of Firethorne, Jordan Ranch and the Lamar side of Young Ranch.
• Waller ISD reaches about 4% of 77493, and Alief ISD holds a sliver of 77450.

Those are boundary facts; I don’t rank districts or steer anyone toward one, because the district follows the parcel. The five-minute check I run for every first-time home buyer in Katy happens on every address before it goes on our tour list. Read the taxing units on the county appraisal record (HCAD, FBCAD or Waller CAD name the school district), confirm the campus on the district’s own address tool (Katy ISD and Lamar CISD both publish attendance-zone lookups), then read the campus rating on TXschools.gov. Districts also rezone as campuses open (Lamar CISD’s next-year map already moves Young Ranch’s Lamar lots to the new Williams High School for 2027-28), so check next year’s zone too. I’m working on a separate post that walks the question of which district a specific Katy address is in, street by street; this is the first-time-buyer cut.

The tax stack, and why two $335,000 houses can carry very different bills

Every Katy tax bill stacks a school district, a county, and then either the City of Katy or a MUD, or in the newer in-city communities both; because the city sits in three counties, the county layer itself comes in three sizes. On the 2026 rates, an in-city address with no MUD runs from about $1.95 per $100 of value on the Fort Bend side to about $2.21 on the Harris side, and the in-city communities that also carry a MUD run up to about $3.04 in Cane Island. Outside the city, where most first-time buyers end up, a MUD plus an emergency services district replaces the city line; the newest MUDs in 77493 pushed some combined rates above $3.30 on the 2025 rates, while an established community with no MUD, Lakes of Katy, was about $1.83 on the same 2025 basis. Why those rates fall as the bonds are paid down is in my explainer on what a MUD district is.

Here is the one worked example, on a $335,000 house (about the 77493 median), at the 2026 adopted rates with the homestead exemption. In an in-city Harris-side neighborhood with no MUD, such as Katyland or Heritage Park West, the combined rate is about $2.21 per $100 and the bill is about $5,100 a year. In Cane Island, inside the city on the Waller County side with Harris-Waller Counties MUD 3 on top, the combined rate is about $3.04 and the same house carries about $8,300. That is roughly $270 a month on the same purchase price, before anyone compares a kitchen; the Katy, TX guide carries the full in-city rate table.

The Texas homestead exemption takes $140,000 off the school district’s taxable value, applying from the 2025 tax year, and the City of Katy and the Harris and Fort Bend County units each take 20% off their lines; file it as soon as you close and move in, and the over-65 exemption adds more later. The catch that surprises new-build buyers: the first tax bill after closing is often on the land only, because the house was not on the roll on January 1, so set your escrow from the finished value or the second year’s payment will jump. The seller must give you written notice of any MUD and its rate before you sign the contract; ask then how the rate has moved over three years. None of this is tax advice; your title company can confirm the exact bills on an address.

New build or resale on a first budget in Katy

This is where Katy differs most from an established suburb like Cypress. In 77493 the median year built of the homes sold in the last twelve months is 2025, so most of what a first-time home buyer in Katy tours there is new, and that is where first-budget supply is deepest. In 77450 and 77494 it flips to resale from the 1990s to the 2010s in communities whose utility districts have had years to retire debt, which is why the same price carries a lower monthly payment there. As a real estate agent who also holds a Texas appraiser license, I weigh the two the way an appraisal does: the newest section has the youngest MUD debt and the least resale history, and a settled neighborhood has years of resales to price against.

Builder incentives are real money, and in Katy right now the two common forms are a lower interest rate through the builder’s preferred lender and the builder paying most or all of the buyer’s closing costs. How those offers are priced, and how to compare them against a resale seller’s concessions on equal terms, is worked out in how builder incentives really work and new construction vs. resale in Houston; the current offers are in my October 2026 builder incentives roundup. Resale sellers in 77450 and 77494 are competing with those offers, so an offer on an established Katy home can reasonably ask for closing-cost help and repairs; I wrote about that competition from the seller’s seat in selling your home in Katy.

One rule applies to every new home, before your first visit to a model: register your own real estate agent with the builder, because the sales representative there works for the builder and the registration is how your representation is recognized. In my own new-construction closings the builder has always paid my buyer-side compensation; I state that as my own record, since each builder sets its own terms. Either way, who pays is known before any contract is signed. The details are in do you need your own real estate agent for new construction and who pays on a new-construction home.

Flood risk in Katy, read lot by lot

Katy drains toward the Barker Reservoir: 99.5% of the City of Katy is in the Barker watershed. Being in the watershed is not being in the reservoir; the Barker dam is about 9 miles from the nearest city limit, and no city lot sits on the reservoir’s government land. About 11% of the city’s area is mapped in FEMA Zone A or AE, the areas with at least a 1% annual chance of flooding, concentrated along Cane Island Branch and the Buffalo Bayou tributaries, and 773 of the city’s 8,886 recorded lots touch those zones. The rest is Zone X, the lower-risk designation, and outside the city the same parcel-by-parcel logic applies.

So the check is the lot itself. Pull the FEMA panel for the address on the FEMA Map Service Center, look for a letter of map change (FEMA’s flood-hazard layer lists 79 of them inside the city’s footprint), and read the seller’s flood disclosure and claims history. I mapped every question on that Texas disclosure in Houston’s flood disclosure questions. A lender will usually require flood insurance in Zone A or AE; in Zone X it is optional and often inexpensive, and I recommend it either way.

Do first-time home buyer programs work in Katy? It depends on the jurisdiction

Yes, but which program depends on which government your address pays taxes to. Every program below was read on its own page on October 26, 2026, and two of the local ones are closed to new applicants as I write this. How the statewide programs are funded and what the rate markup costs you is in down payment assistance in Houston.

• Harris County Down Payment Assistance Program: applies if your address is in unincorporated Harris County, which covers most of 77449 and 77450 and the Harris side of 77493 outside the city limits. Up to $40,000 as a silent second lien; purchase price capped at $285,000 on an existing home and $296,000 on a new one; a qualified census tract, a 580 credit score and no home ownership in the prior three years. As of October 26, 2026 the county’s program page says it has reached capacity and is accepting only applicants affected by Hurricane Beryl or the derecho; check it for a reopening before you count on it.
• City of Houston Homebuyer Assistance Program: applies if the home pays taxes to the City of Houston, which some Katy addresses in 77449 and 77450 do. Income is capped at 80% of area median income, first-time buyers only, and as of October 26, 2026 the city’s page says it is not accepting applications because funds are exhausted.
• The City of Katy, Fort Bend County and Waller County: I found no down payment program of their own on October 26, 2026 (Fort Bend County’s community development page lists only housing rehabilitation and block grants), so those addresses go straight to the statewide programs.
• TSAHC Home Sweet Texas and Homes for Texas Heroes: statewide, so they apply to every Katy address. The household income limit for the Houston area, including Harris, Fort Bend and Waller counties, is $156,000 under Home Sweet Texas and $176,800 under Homes for Texas Heroes (TSAHC, limits raised in 2026). Assistance is 2% to 5% of the loan as a grant or a three-year forgivable second lien, with no first-time requirement. The purchase price limit is set by county; TSAHC’s county tool gives the current figure for your side of Katy.
• TDHCA My First Texas Home: the state’s own first-time program, statewide, for buyers who have not owned a home in the prior three years (waived in targeted areas and for veterans), with down payment assistance alongside a 30-year loan; details at TDHCA’s homebuyer site. SETH 5 Star, the Southeast Texas Housing Finance Corporation’s program, sets no first-time rule and no sales-price ceiling; its mechanics are in the down payment assistance post above.

The practical order for a Katy address today: confirm which government the parcel pays, check whether a local program is open that week, then compare each statewide program against a plain loan, because the statewide programs recover the assistance through a higher interest rate. I hold the Texas Affordable Housing Specialist designation, which is the REALTOR® training built around exactly these programs, so when a client asks whether assistance makes sense on a Katy address I can run that comparison with them and their lender rather than guess.

How I help a first-time home buyer in Katy, from the first call to the keys

I’ve been a REALTOR® and a licensed Texas real estate broker since 1989, I’ve lived in the Houston area since I was five, and I work the Greater Houston area with Houston, Cypress and Katy at the core. You work with me directly from the first call to closing, with no hand-off to a team member, and across 229 verified client surveys on HAR.com my rating is 5.0 out of 5.0. A large share of those clients were buying their first home.

The first call covers the budget your lender has actually approved, the school district you need or whether any of the six will do, where your commute starts, and whether a new build or a resale fits you better. From those answers I set the ZIP codes we tour, so you can see a $335,000 new build in 77493 and a $335,000 resale in 77449 the same afternoon, each with its full monthly figure, taxes and insurance included. Between tours, my app with a live Houston MLS feed sends you new Katy listings the day they hit the market, so you are never the last to hear about the house that fits.

Before we write on anything, I run the address-level checks this post describes: the county and whether the lot is inside the city, the school district and campus on the parcel, the MUD or ESD rate and which way it is moving, the FEMA panel and any map change, and the HOA’s resale fees. On a new home I register you with the builder before your first model-home visit and sit on your side of the table through the contract. A first purchase also needs a slower pace than a third one: I read each document with you before you sign it, and when the inspection report comes back I tell you which items are routine for a Katy house of that age and which deserve a second look.

As first-time home buyers, we had no idea what this entire process entailed, then we found Kevan. Kevan has been very helpful in explaining all the steps and pointing out things we would have never seen on our own. He is a very knowledgeable, patient, and friendly person. When we hit a roadblock in the loan process, he encouraged us to take our time and think things through, which prevented us from making rash decisions. — Oma P., first-time buyer, Google review

My compensation as your real estate buyer’s agent is set out in a written buyer representation agreement before the first showing, and who pays it is settled before any contract is signed. If you’d like a way to judge any real estate agent on substance, including me, how to choose a REALTOR® is my checklist, and the home-buying guide walks the whole process.

Questions a first-time home buyer in Katy asks me

How much does a first home in Katy cost?

About $270,000 to $400,000, depending on the ZIP code. In the twelve months to October 17, 2026, the median single-family sale price was $270,000 in 77449, $335,000 in 77493 and $394,000 in 77450, per HAR MLS, and 77494 at $486,500 sits above most first budgets. At the 7.32% average rate for the week of October 22, 2026, a $335,000 purchase at 5% down comes to about $2,186 a month in principal and interest.

Is every Katy address in Katy ISD?

No. Katy ISD covers most of the area, but Cy-Fair ISD covers about 44% of 77449, Royal ISD about 10% of 77493 including part of Sunterra, Lamar CISD about 8% of 77494, Waller ISD about 4% of 77493, and a sliver of 77450 is Alief ISD, per the Census Bureau’s school-district boundaries. The county appraisal record names the district for any parcel, and the district’s own attendance-zone tool names the campus.

Are property taxes high in Katy?

It depends on the MUD and the county more than on Katy itself. On a $335,000 house with a homestead exemption at 2026 rates, an in-city Harris-side neighborhood with no MUD runs about $5,100 a year at about $2.21 per $100 of value, while Cane Island, with a MUD on top of the city tax, runs about $8,300 at about $3.04. Get the combined rate for the specific address before you compare houses.

Do first-time home buyer programs work in Katy?

Yes, and which one depends on the government your address pays taxes to. The statewide TSAHC and TDHCA programs apply to every Katy address, with a $156,000 household income limit under TSAHC’s Home Sweet Texas for Harris, Fort Bend and Waller counties. The Harris County program covers only unincorporated Harris County addresses and was closed to new applicants other than Hurricane Beryl and derecho victims as of October 26, 2026, and the City of Houston program, which reaches some 77449 and 77450 addresses, was out of funds the same day. The City of Katy, Fort Bend County and Waller County have no program of their own that I could find.

Should a first-time home buyer in Katy buy new construction?

Often, as long as the tax trade is priced into the monthly figure. In 77493 the median year built of homes sold in the last twelve months is 2025, so new construction is where first-budget supply is deepest, and builders are offering lower rates through their preferred lenders; the trade is a younger MUD with a higher combined tax rate and a first-year tax bill that is often on land only. A resale in 77449 or 77450 usually carries a lower combined tax rate and a longer resale history. Either way, register your own real estate agent with the builder before the first model-home visit.

How do I choose a real estate agent for a first purchase in Katy?

Ask any candidate which school district a specific Katy address is zoned to and how they would confirm it, what the MUD line does to the monthly payment on that address, and whether the address is inside the City of Katy; a real estate agent who works Katy answers each in a sentence. Confirm the license on TREC’s site, read the client surveys on HAR.com, and expect a written buyer representation agreement before the first showing. My full checklist is in how to choose a REALTOR®.

Last updated: October 2026 · Sources: HAR MLS single-family pulls by ZIP code, twelve months to October 17, 2026; Freddie Mac Primary Mortgage Market Survey, October 22, 2026; Texas Education Agency 2026 accountability ratings via TXschools.gov; U.S. Census Bureau school-district and incorporated-place boundaries; Harris County Tax Office, Harris Central Appraisal District, Fort Bend Central Appraisal District and Waller County Appraisal District (2026 adopted rates); City of Katy; FEMA National Flood Hazard Layer and USGS watershed boundaries; Harris County Community Services, City of Houston Housing and Community Development, TSAHC and TDHCA program pages (read October 26, 2026). Prices, rates, zones and program rules change; verify current figures for any specific property. General information, not legal, tax or financial advice.

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