​​​​​​​​The winter wildfires in Texas have prompted media and community concerns. Will these fires, which include the so-called Smokehouse Creek Fire (now the largest wildfire in the state's history), become a homeowners insurance nightmare?​ To address this, we asked the TRERC Research Staff to consider three primary questions.​​ Are more homes insured in Texas metro areas than in the state's rural communities? Several factors influence whether a homeowner has property insurance. Two are particularly important because of the demographics in many ru ..read more

Dr. Adam Perdue ​​When are $159,776, $200,000, and $250,350 all equal? When you're talking about housing over time. A recent RECON article discussed the disappearance of new homes selling for less than $200,000 in Texas. In the article, I mentioned inflation played a role in the reduction of affordable homes. Let's talk about that. As we've learned the last couple of years, $200,000 isn't what it used to be. But it can be even more complicated than that. Look at Figure 1 and notice how the Consumer Price Index (CPI) has changed over the past 11 years. The dotted lines convert today's dollars t ..read more

Wesley Miller ​​​​​​​​​​​​​​Editor’s note: This post is part of a new series about the impacts natural disasters have on a region’s public health, economic activity, and individual decision-making. While the papers cited in the posts extend beyond natural disasters in Texas, the results will be contextualized to the state’s population. For more about this series, click here​. This month’s post on "When Disaster Strikes"​ explores the extent of the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) in Texas. The NFIP is administered by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and has been the primar ..read more

Wesley Miller ​​​​​​​​​​Editor’s note: This post is part of a new series about the impacts natural disasters have on a region’s public health, economic activity, and individual decision-making. While the papers cited in the posts extend beyond natural disasters in Texas, the results will be contextualized to the state’s population. For more about this series, click here​. The third paper of this blog series, “Natural Disasters and Willingness to Pay for Reliable Electricity: The 2021 Winter Storm in Texas as a Natural Experiment,” is one of the first academic studies of Winter Storm Uri t ..read more

Wesley Miller ​​​​​​​Editor’s note: This post is part of a new series about the impacts natural disasters have on a region’s public health, economic activity, and individual decision-making. While the papers cited in the posts extend beyond natural disasters in Texas, the results will be contextualized to the state’s population. For more about this series, click here. ​The second paper of this blog series, “Let The Rich Be Flooded: The Distribution of Financial Aid and Distress After Hurricane Harvey,” was recently published in the Journal of Financial Economics by a team of researchers f ..read more

Wesley Miller ​​​Editor’s note: This post is part of a new series about the impacts natural disasters have on a region’s public health, economic activity, and individual decision-making. While the papers cited in the posts extend beyond natural disasters in Texas, the results will be contextualized to the state’s population. For more about this series, click here. The first paper highlighted in this blog series was published by Deryugina et al. in the American Economic Journal: Applied Economics in 2018. It measures the social and economic costs of Hurricane Katrina on the residents of New Or ..read more

Wesley Miller ​​​In May 2022, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) forecasted the seventh consecutive year of above-average Atlantic hurricane activity. Despite 16 days remaining in hurricane season, NOAA’s prediction proved accurate, with ten hurricanes and an additional six named storms resulting in $53 billion in damages and hundreds of deaths. Fortunately for Texans, the storms have strayed from the western portion of the Gulf Coast aside from isolated showers. The most recent storm, Hurricane Nicole, made landfall in Florida on Nov. 9 and moved through the ..read more

David S. Jones ​​We became the experts for Texas real estate on May 18, 1971. The minute Gov. Preston Smith signed Senate Bill 338, the Texas Real Estate Research Center was created, and Texans had a place they could go to for answers. We were instantly experts not by virtue of anything we had done to date but because we were now part of an institution known worldwide for its research — Texas A&M University. Of course, in the 51 years that followed, the Center has built a strong reputation. More than 2,300 articles and reports are a testament to our history of applied research. In the mark ..read more

Clare Losey First-time homebuyers generally lack the money to make large down payments on a home. According to the Survey of Consumer Finances, the medi​an net worth of renters measured $6,300 in 2019. Meanwhile, U.S. Census Bureau data indicate that nearly half of all renters in the U.S. were younger than 30; an additional quarter were 30-44 years old.  Lower wealth among first-time homebuyers lends itself to two trends:  First-time homebuyers make up a higher proportion of borrowers with federally backed mortgages (i.e., FHA and VA loans), which require lower dow ..read more

Clare Losey ​Housing markets give off clues signifying where they may be headed, so real estate professionals need to pay attention to them, particularly during periods of persistent fluctuation, transition, or uncertainty. Here are three indicators that are especially worth watching over the coming months. High Home Price Appreciation It’s hardly a secret that home prices have increased significantly since the end of the Great Recession. From July 2009 to February 2020, home price appreciation averaged 3.1 percent nationwide, as reflected by the S&P/Case-Shiller U.S. National Home Price ..read more