Quote:
Originally Posted by JManc
Texas was affordable when I first moved here in the late 90's; the landlord offered to sell my parents the house they were renting for $125k. It was a small post war ranch in a nice area in a convenient location but that same house is worth about ~$400k (unrenovated) now. There are so many poor/ undesirable areas here in Houston (and TX in general) with cheap housing prices (~$100k) that it drives down the average overall.
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The affordability of Houston was driven by the oil bust of the 1980s.
I arrived in Houston in 1982, and at the time Houston home prices were considerably higher than the national average, 2x to 3x prices that we had seen in the Rust Belt cities. That changed quickly with the oil crash, and as the fortunes of the Houston Metro swung from gaining 150,000 new residents in 1982 to losing 36,000 residents in 1987. By 1985 Houston home prices had fallen below the national average, and the spread continued to open through the end of the 80s when Houston was 20-30% below the national average. It wasn't until the 90s that population gains recommenced, and home prices began to move back upward. It wasn't even until the 2000s that Houston showed a net positive domestic migration (though again domestic migration turned negative by the mid 2010s).