There are 743 homes for sale in Houston right now between $400,000 and $450,000, and one number tells you more than the rest: the average listing has three bedrooms. When the suburban houses in this range routinely have four, that’s a signal. A big share of this band is close-in townhomes and patio homes built in the last five years, sitting alongside larger, older houses in the established suburbs. So if you’re weighing homes for sale in Houston $400K to $450K, the decision you’re really making is about age: a nearly new home with less space near the center, or a twenty-year-old home with more space farther out, and what each one asks of you after closing. I’ll walk through it below, and you’ll find the live listings further down.
Houston’s market heading into fall
This budget sits almost exactly on Houston’s average single-family price, which HAR’s latest housing update put at $440,816 in July, up 1.9% from a year earlier; the median came in at $340,000. Active listings hit 40,750, a record for the association, and months of inventory reached 5.5 — a touch short of the six-month mark that’s generally read as a balanced market, but far more choice than buyers have had in years. Homes averaged 53 days on the market, three days longer than last July. Sales in the $250,000-to-$500,000 range were essentially flat year over year at 4,690 closings, which tells me this segment is moving at a steady, unhurried pace: enough buyers to keep well-priced homes selling, enough supply that nobody has to overpay.
Nearly new and close in, or larger and established
Across the band, the average listing is about 2,292 square feet at $201 a foot. Split it in two and the picture sharpens. The first kind of home is a three-bedroom townhome or patio home of 1,800 to 2,200 square feet in the Near Northside, the Heights fringe, Third Ward, or along the EaDo corridor — often built after 2020 and sometimes still under a builder’s structural warranty, with a small yard and a garage on the ground floor. You’re paying for location and for not having to fix anything for a while. The second kind is a four-bedroom house of 2,600 to 3,000 square feet from the late 1990s or 2000s in the established suburbs — Copperfield and Bear Creek on the northwest side, the Clear Lake area to the southeast, Kingwood and Atascocita up north — on a real lot, in a neighborhood where the trees are grown in. You’re paying for space and for the school feeder. Both are legitimate at $425,000; they simply hand you different jobs as an owner.
What twenty years of age actually costs
The older house is usually the bigger house, and the discount for age is real, but part of it is deferred cost. Three systems drive the difference in Houston. First, the roof: composition shingles here last roughly 15 to 20 years in our sun and storms, and insurers increasingly quote by roof age, so a 2004 roof can mean a higher premium or a replacement condition before you close. Second, the air conditioning: a condenser and air handler run ten to fifteen years in this climate, and replacing both is a four-figure job on the low end. Third, the foundation: most of Houston sits on expansive clay, so a slab from 2003 has been through two decades of wet-dry cycles. That isn’t a reason to avoid older homes. It’s a reason to use your option period to get the roof, the HVAC, and the foundation looked at properly, ask for any prior foundation repair paperwork and whether the warranty transfers, and then price the next five years of upkeep into your offer. The new townhome skips most of this, but check the HOA’s reserve study and who maintains the shared driveway, because a young community hasn’t had to pay for anything yet.
What the payment looks like at $425,000
At the 6.71% average 30-year rate on my weekly Houston mortgage rates page, a $425,000 home with 20% down finances $340,000 and runs about $2,196 a month in principal and interest; with 10% down it’s roughly $2,471 on a $382,500 loan. Texas property taxes and homeowner’s insurance come on top through escrow, and both are the wildcards here: the suburban house may sit in a MUD district that adds to the tax rate, while the close-in townhome may carry a higher insurance quote or HOA dues instead. I build the full monthly figure for every home we tour so you’re comparing what you’d actually pay, not two sticker prices. If you’re new to the sequence, my guide to the Houston home-buying process lays out each step.
A buyer’s read and a seller’s read
If you’re buying, 5.5 months of supply means you can let the inspection report do some of your negotiating; a roof or a condenser near the end of its life is a reasonable thing to ask a seller to address or credit. If you’re selling an older home in this band, the buyers looking at you are also looking at nearly new townhomes for the same money, so the homes that sell quickly are the ones where the big-ticket items are already handled and documented. Knowing your competition is half of pricing well. If your budget runs a little under this, I covered what $350K to $400K buys in Houston last month, and my Houston neighborhoods page walks through the areas one at a time.
A live look: Houston homes from $400K to $450K
These are current HAR MLS listings in the band, fed straight from the MLS and refreshed as homes list and go under contract:
$450,000
Active
4035 Buck Street Houston, Texas
3 Beds 4 Baths 2,151 SqFt 0.042 Acres
$450,000
Active
9011 Kerrwood Lane Houston, Texas
2 Beds 1 Baths 1,216 SqFt 0.264 Acres
$449,950
Active
418 W 28th Street C Houston, Texas
3 Beds 4 Baths 2,035 SqFt 0.036 Acres
$449,500
Active
17806 W Copper Lakes Drive Houston, Texas
4 Beds 3 Baths 3,099 SqFt 0.207 Acres
$449,000
Active
5404 Cornish Street Houston, Texas
3 Beds 3 Baths 1,916 SqFt 0.033 Acres
$443,000
Active
10319 Stanbrook Drive Houston, Texas
5 Beds 4 Baths 3,166 SqFt 0.165 Acres
That’s six of the 743. See every Houston home from $400K to $450K, move down to the $350K–$400K range, up to $450K–$500K, or start from all Houston homes for sale and filter it your own way.
Search the whole city on a map
If you think in neighborhoods rather than price bands, you can search every active Houston listing on my site and draw a boundary around the parts of town you’d actually live in. On your phone, the free Houston Prime Realty app pulls from the same live MLS feed, so a new listing or a price cut shows up when it posts rather than a day later. Or tell me what you need and I’ll set the search up and tell you which side of the age question each home falls on.
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Weighing new-and-close-in against bigger-and-established? Let’s talk.
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Kevan Pewitt · REALTOR® & Broker · Houston Prime Realty
Kevan Pewitt is a licensed Texas REALTOR® and Broker. Houston Prime Realty supports Equal Housing Opportunity. Market figures, square footage, and averages are current as of publication and change; system lifespans are general ranges, and property-tax rates, insurance quotes, and HOA dues vary by address, so verify each for any specific home. This is general information, not legal, tax, or insurance advice. Listings shown are pulled live from the HAR MLS and change throughout the day.
Last updated: September 2026
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