Texas lawmakers passed a few housing bills this session. How will they impact housing prices? ...Middle East

AUSTIN (KXAN) — Texas continues to grow, which means housing affordability continues to be a problem for the state. With the end of Texas' 89th Legislative Session, what did lawmakers do to address it?

Texas REALTORS Public Policy Director Julia Parenteau said that many important conversations happened around affordability this session. The state is largely reorienting itself after a home buying boom in 2020, she said.

"The Texas housing market is still reeling a bit from the mid-COVID-19 pandemic boom that we had," Parenteau said. "When everyone started buying houses mid-pandemic and even more people started moving here, it became a pretty critical issue."

How are things in Central Texas?

Austin Mayor Kirk Watson said in April that other cities have looked to Austin for its housing policy. Since 2020, the city of Austin has experienced consistently ample construction, and city leaders made major changes to its development code.

"Affordability is still a little bit tough around the state ... here in Austin, in Travis County, Williamson County, Hays County, it's even a little bit tighter," Parenteau said. "Our prices are still high. They're getting better. We've had a lot of building happening, but it's still challenging for people to access housing that is affordable to them."

Zillow senior economist Orphe Divounguy said in a Dec. 11, 2024, interview that the Austin-Round Rock Metropolitan Statistical Area (Austin MSA) was a buyer's market and a cooling one.

“Austin was unsustainably hot during the pandemic,” he said in that interview. “Today, potential home buyers in Austin have more options than anywhere else in the country, and are in a better place. I think it is one of the healthiest housing markets in the country.”

The most recent numbers, as of April 2025, for the Austin-Round Rock MSA show:

"What I hear from our realtor members, is that they do see a lot of listings that are maybe priced like they could have been two years ago, and that in those cases there, there might be a reason why the seller might want to think about dropping their price down," Parenteau said.

So what bills got passed?

As for the legislative session, Parenteau said lawmakers entered it with housing affordability in mind. Also, as of the start of the session, more than 1,300 people were moving to Texas daily, she added.

"The legislature ... really kicked around a whole bunch of ideas really designed, for the most part, at getting more housing supply on the ground across Texas," she said. "We don't see any slowing down in the demand for Texas housing. People are still moving here. Our households are still growing in Texas."

Property tax and homestead exemption-related bills passed this session, of course, but some lawmakers put forward bills directed towards easing restrictions on builders.

One bill that passed was Senate Bill 15, which reduces the minimum lot size required for a single-family dwelling. Bill author Sen. Paul Bettencourt, R-Houston, said it will help Texas build more "starter homes."

“The housing affordability crisis in Texas is real and we’re facing it head-on, removing large lot size requirements has proven to increase home construction and lower prices,” said Bettencourt in a press release. “With the average age of a first-time homebuyer now at 54 and rising, we must act now to bring homeownership back within reach for Texas families.”

Other housing and construction bills that passed this session include:

House Bill 3792, filed by Rep. James Talarico, D-Austin, would have started the process of turning surplus state property into affordable housing. It failed to advance beyond a committee hearing.

Reviewing the session, Parenteau said lawmakers understand that property tax relief isn't a "silver bullet."

"The efforts that the legislature and that the city of Austin, in particular, have been making to really boost our housing development are helping," she said. "There's still a lot more work to be done, and we're excited to see these measures that the Legislature passed, and see how they roll out and help get some more of that supply on the market."

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