National Prices Sped Up to 1.9% in July. Dallas Went Negative. The Ten-Year Printed 5.24%.

By Steve Waller · September 30, 2026

Two price releases landed Tuesday and neither one describes a house in Texas

S&P Cotality Case-Shiller reported that its national index rose 1.93% over the twelve months to July, up from 1.6% in June. The FHFA index, out the same morning, put the national twelve-month gain at 2.6% and the single month at 0.3%. Read the headlines and price growth is accelerating.

Then look for Texas in either number.

Dallas is negative, and FHFA's Texas division runs 1.5 points behind the country

Case-Shiller carries one Texas metro in its twenty-city list, and Dallas fell 0.44% over the year to July. Six of the twenty were negative - Seattle at 1.57% down, Las Vegas 1.29% down, Denver 1.09% down, Tampa 0.73% down, Portland 0.65% down, Dallas 0.44% down. The gains sat in the Midwest and Northeast: Chicago 6.86%, New York 5.78%, Cleveland 4.22%.

FHFA slices the country into nine divisions instead of metros. West South Central, which holds Texas, gained 1.1% over the year against the national 2.6%. That is 1.5 percentage points behind, and second from the bottom of the nine - only the Mountain division at 0.6% was weaker, against Middle Atlantic at 6.3%.

Houston's own figures say the same thing in dollars. HAR put the August single-family median at $330,000, $5,000 lower than August 2025 and down 1.5%. The average price went the other way, up 1.2% to $426,760 - which is what happens when the top of the market keeps transacting and the middle thins out. Sales came in at 7,100, down 11.5% on the year, against 38,947 active single-family listings and 5.3 months of inventory. Days on market ran 54 against 52 a year ago.

Statewide, the Texas Real Estate Research Center's newest edition covers July: 5.5 months of supply, a median of $339,000 unchanged on the year, and 63 days on market for what sold.

The ten-year added 28 basis points in four sessions

The Fed's daily series has the ten-year Treasury at 4.96% on Tuesday 22 September and 5.24% on Monday 28 September - 5.11%, 5.18% and 5.17% in between. That 5.24% is the highest daily print in the series since 2007.

Freddie Mac's weekly survey, taken before most of that move, put the thirty-year at 7.03% for the week ending 24 September, with the fifteen-year at 6.42%. A year earlier the same survey read 6.30%. Mortgage News Daily's index of daily lender quotes stood at 7.58% at 4:03pm on 29 September. Those two are not the same measurement - one is a weekly survey averaged across lenders, the other a daily quote index - and five days separate them, so treat the 55 basis point gap as a sign the daily market has moved rather than as a like-for-like comparison.

What that move costs the buyer you plan to sell to

Hold a buyer's payment budget still at $2,200 a month of principal and interest on a thirty-year loan. At 7.03% that budget carries $329,678. At 7.58% it carries $312,189. The same buyer, the same money, $17,488 less house - a 5.3% cut in reach.

That is the part of your ARV that is not yours to control. You can hold the finish quality and the timeline and still watch the number your buyer can qualify for fall while you are mid-rehab.

And what it costs the takeout, at a rent that did not move

HAR's rental report put Houston's average single-family lease at $2,412 in August against $2,414 a year earlier. Two dollars lower, twelve months apart.

Put that rent against a $330,000 house. Taxes at a 2.2% rate - an assumption, not a measurement - run $605 a month. Insurance at the Texas Department of Insurance's preliminary 2025 statewide average of $3,506 a year is $292 a month. On a lender DSCR of gross rent over PITIA, clearing 1.20x leaves $1,113 a month for principal and interest. That supports about $166,762 of thirty-year loan at 7.03% and about $157,916 at 7.58% - $8,846 of proceeds gone to fifty-five basis points. At a bare 1.00x the same two rates support roughly $227,003 and $214,961.

Nothing on the rent side offsets it. The rent is flat and the insurance line is five years into a run that TDI's own table prices at $1,987 in 2020 and $3,506 in 2025.

Where the appreciation assumption hides in a file

One percentage point of ARV on a $300,000 exit is $3,000 of value - and $2,100 of maximum purchase price at a 70% advance, $2,250 at 75%. That is how small an ARV error has to be to matter.

Now apply each of Tuesday's numbers to a six-month hold on that $300,000 exit. The Case-Shiller national pace adds $2,881. FHFA's national pace adds $3,875. FHFA's West South Central pace adds $1,645. Dallas's pace takes $661 off. Houston's median pace takes $2,259 off.

The distance between underwriting to the national number and underwriting to Houston's is $5,140 of ARV on a single house, which is $3,598 of maximum purchase price at a 70% advance. Nobody writes "national appreciation" on a deal sheet. It gets in through a comp set stretched six months wide, or an ARV set at the highest sale on the street instead of the middle of it.

The supply side did not move to help

Census reported August completions at a 1,128,000 annual rate, down 27.1% on the year with a margin of error of 8.9 points - still the only change in that release large enough to clear its own error band. Starts ran 1,275,000, down 1.2% against an error band of 10.8 points, which is to say not measurably changed. Permits came in at 1,394,000, up 3.5% on the year.

New homes are the competition for a finished flip, and they are discounting. August new-home sales ran 684,000 with 8.5 months of supply on the shelf, and the median new-home price of $393,700 was down 5.8% on the year.

Costs on the build side went the wrong way again. The BLS index of net inputs to new residential construction rose from 162.934 in July to 164.801 in August - 1.15% in one month.

What to do with the file on your desk

The test has not changed and this week is the reason it has not: after-repair value times 70% to 75%, minus repairs, minus closing costs, equals the most you can pay. Every figure above moves one of those terms and none of them moves the price a seller is asking.

So the discipline is on the ARV. It is what comparable houses in that subdivision actually closed at in the last 180 days - not the subdivision's best sale, not a ZIP-code average, and not today's comp with a national growth rate laid over the hold period. Comp at subdivision level and the number is defensible. Comp at ZIP level and it is not; we have measured that error at more than 40% on a real data set.

When the formula's answer lands below the asking price, that gap gets closed in the purchase price or it does not get closed. Waiting for the market to close it is, on Tuesday's numbers, waiting for something Texas is not currently doing.

The week ahead

• Thursday 1 October - Freddie Mac's weekly survey, the first print to fully capture last week's move in the ten-year.
• Friday 2 October, 8:30am ET - the BLS Employment Situation for September. The labour print is what the bond market is trading right now, so this is the week's rate event.
• First half of October - HAR's September Houston report, on its usual timing. Watch whether the 11.5% sales decline was a one-month swing; July's sales were up 1.6% on the year.
• Tuesday 20 October - Census New Residential Construction for September, including whether the collapse in completions holds.

Sources

• Federal Reserve H.15 Selected Interest Rates, 29 September 2026
• FRED DGS10, 10-Year Treasury Constant Maturity
• S&P Cotality Case-Shiller Home Price Index, July 2026 data
• FHFA House Price Index monthly report, September 2026 (July data)
• Houston Association of Realtors, August 2026 housing update
• Houston Association of Realtors, Rental Market Update
• Texas Real Estate Research Center, Texas Housing Insight
• Freddie Mac Primary Mortgage Market Survey
• Mortgage News Daily, mortgage rate index
• US Census Bureau, New Residential Construction, August 2026
• US Census Bureau, New Residential Sales, August 2026
• BLS net inputs to new residential construction (WPUIP231100)
• Texas Department of Insurance, homeowners insurance market overview
• BLS Employment Situation release schedule

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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