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Twenty-Five Houses Out of 7,167 — and the Ten-Year Took Back Part of the Margin

By Steve Waller · September 13, 2026

Twenty-Five Houses Out of 7,167 — and the Ten-Year Took Back Part of the Margin

Across four Texas county screens this week — Harris, Bexar, northern Travis with Williamson, and ten miles around downtown Dallas — 7,167 active single-family listings went through the same test: 75% of after-repair value, less repairs, less closing. Twenty-five cleared at the asking price. Of 531 tenant-occupied rentals screened separately across three markets, none did. Underneath all of it the ten-year Treasury went from 4.78% to 4.95% in six sessions and finished Friday at 4.96%.

The week's work, in one line of arithmetic

Every screen this week ran the same test, and at acquisition it is the only test that matters: after-repair value times 75%, less repairs, less closing costs, equals the most you can pay. No filter on days on market, no hunting the remarks for the word "investor", no minimum spread invented after the fact. Every active single-family listing in the county, comped at subdivision level against closed sales in the same subdivision, then the formula.

Four county-level screens, 7,167 active listings, and this is what came out the other side:

Twenty-five houses out of 7,167. About one listing in every 287, or roughly a third of one percent. That is the most useful fact this desk produced all week, and it points at something the inventory headlines keep getting backwards. The market is not short of houses — Houston alone ended August with 38,947 of them for sale. It is short of houses whose asking price leaves room for the work.

A separate screen, and the same answer in all three markets

Tenant-occupied rentals were run on their own, because the pitch is a good one: a house with income already attached, no turn, no vacancy on day one. 531 of them across Houston, San Antonio and the corridor south and east of the city. Not one cleared at the asking price.

The reason is structural rather than bad luck. A tenant in place gets priced by the seller as an amenity and underwritten by the lender as a constraint. You inherit the rent that exists, not the rent the marketing projects, and you inherit it at a price that already charges you for the convenience. The three-market tenanted screen.

One structural choice moved a board measurably, and it is worth knowing the size of the trade. On a 1,574-listing screen across twenty-one zip codes in Harris, Galveston and Brazoria, financing the closing costs instead of having the borrower bring them cut the qualifying board roughly in half. Nothing wrong happened — the loan simply has to grow to carry those costs, and the cap on after-repair value does not grow with it. Zero out of pocket is real, and this is what it costs in board size. That screen.

What moved underneath all of it

The ten-year Treasury was 4.78% on 4 September, 4.95% by the 10th, and the note finished Friday at 4.96%. Seventeen basis points in six sessions, and within four of five percent.

Two inflation prints did it. Producer prices for final demand rose 0.4% in August and 5.4% over twelve months, with final demand goods up 1.1% in the month alone. Consumer prices rose 0.4% in the month and 3.4% over the year, core 0.3% and 2.4%. Gasoline rose 3.9% in August and accounted for more than a third of the entire all-items increase, and it is up 27.4% over twelve months.

Buried in the same producer price release is a number that belongs in every rehab budget written this month: processed goods for intermediate demand rose 1.8% in August and 11.5% over the year. That is the raw material of a renovation. A repair estimate carried over from last autumn's pricing is not conservative. It is stale, and it is stale in the direction that costs you the deal.

Houston's own numbers

HAR's August report: roughly 7,100 single-family closings, down 11.5% on the year, a median of $330,000, 38,947 active listings, 5.3 months of supply, and 54 days on market against 52 a year ago.

Read together, those are not the numbers of a supply surge. They are the numbers of a demand drain. The same pile of houses turns more slowly because fewer buyers can reach the payment — and the seller sitting on a three-percent note has no reason at all to solve that problem for you by cutting his price.

Why the purchase price is the only lever left

ATTOM's most recent flipping data, for the first quarter of 2026, puts the national gross return at 25.4% on a typical gross profit of $66,000, over an average of 165 days from purchase to resale. The Texas metros on that same gross measure, before a dollar of rehab is counted: Houston 7.2%, San Antonio 5.1%, Dallas 4.3%, Austin 2.0%.

Set 165 days of carry against a spread like that, then add the line most files still under-budget. The average Texas homeowners premium was $1,961 in 2019 and $3,291 in 2024 — that is the Texas Department of Insurance's own market data, not an estimate.

On a gross spread of two to seven percent there is no version of this where a better finish level, a sharper listing photo or a faster contractor recovers the margin. It is recovered at the purchase price or it is not recovered at all. Which is why the screen runs the formula first and looks at the house second.

The week ahead

What this changes about a file on the desk

Nothing that happened this week changes which deals work. It moves where the clearing price sits, and it moves it down. A purchase test run three weeks ago against a lower exit rate is now generous by a few thousand dollars — and in a market with a seven percent gross spread, a few thousand dollars is the whole margin.

So rerun it before the offer goes in. The deal calculator takes the exit rate as an input and the DSCR calculator does the same for the rental takeout, which makes re-pricing a file against Friday's ten-year a two-minute job rather than an argument. Whatever number comes out is the number that goes on the contract.

Sources

Market data is from public sources and is provided for information only. Nothing here is an offer of credit, a rate quote, or investment advice. Financing is subject to underwriting, lender approval, appraisal or valuation, title, insurance, property eligibility and program availability.

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