North Houston New Home Market Scan
How 25 homebuilders are competing on price, incentives, inventory, and market footprint.
One builder is a data point. A market is a signal.
Orbit observed publicly available builder surfaces across the North Houston market to understand how builders price, promote, stage inventory, and position themselves geographically.
The Market at a Glance
Public pricing and shoppable inventory are now baseline behavior in this market. Where builders actually differ is in how aggressively they use financial incentives and how far their geographic footprint reaches.
Percentages use resolved denominators. Unknown determinations are excluded rather than counted as No, so several metrics report against fewer than 25 builders.
Public pricing is universal in this market
Advertised entry points
Measured across 24 comparable builders. One builder is excluded from entry-point comparison because its pricing model is not comparable.
Selected examples
Illustrative, not a ranking. Individual builder rows are not published.
- M/I Homes
Audited entry point as low as $189,990 in Pinewood at Grand Texas / New Caney.
https://www.mihomes.com/new-homes/texas/houston - Lennar
Magnolia Forest / Montgomery pricing observed from $192,990.
https://www.lennar.com/new-homes/texas/houston - Meritage Homes
Granger Pointe / Conroe pricing observed from $214,940.
https://www.meritagehomes.com/state/tx/houston - Perry Homes
Magnolia / Escondido starting pricing in the $320s.
https://www.perryhomes.com/new-homes/houston - Gracepoint Homes
Chapel Bend / Montgomery observed from $562,990.
https://gracepointhomes.com/
Pricing transparency has stopped being a differentiator here. When every builder publishes a number, the competitive question shifts from whether a buyer can see the price to what the price is bundled with.
Advertised values are public list positions, not transaction prices. They may exclude lot premiums, options, fees, taxes, and upgrades.
Affordability competition is financial, not just list price
Incentive behavior is where builders in this market visibly diverge.
5 builders could not be resolved from public surfaces during the observation window. They are held as Unknown and excluded from the denominators above rather than counted as No.
- Toll Brothers
- Ravenna Homes
- Partners in Building
- Smith Douglas Homes
- D.R. Horton
Selected examples
- Coventry Homes
Public Houston promotion includes rates as low as 3.49% and savings up to $157K on select homes.
https://www.coventryhomes.com/promotions - Drees Homes
First-year rate starting at 3.625%, plus a separate design / structural-option discount program.
https://www.dreeshomes.com/houston/ - Beazer Homes
Public Houston promotion advertises a 3.490% first-year rate plus 5% in closing costs.
https://www.beazer.com/houston-tx - M/I Homes
Greater Houston promotion advertises 4.875% FHA/VA rates plus up to $10K paid closing costs.
https://www.mihomes.com/new-homes/texas/houston - Lennar
Greater Houston promotion combines a rate incentive, closing-cost contribution, and direct price reduction.
https://www.lennar.com/new-homes/texas/houston
Rate buy-downs and closing-cost contributions change monthly affordability more than a headline price cut of the same nominal value. Builders using both are competing on the buyer's payment, not the sticker.
Only currently observable public offers count. Expired or archived promotion pages are excluded, and local applicability of an offer must be defensible.
Inventory is publicly shoppable before contact
Builders use different terms for overlapping states. Raw terms are preserved rather than assumed equivalent.
- Quick Move-In
- Move-In Ready
- Available Homes
- Inventory Homes
- Quick Delivery
- Ready For You
Selected inventory depth
- Westin Homes
76 North Houston inventory homes observed on its public inventory surface.
- Highland Homes
35 Montgomery Quick Move-In homes observed.
- Lennar
22 homes available at Magnolia Forest.
- D.R. Horton
20 homes across two Magnolia communities in the audited surface.
- M/I Homes
18 Pinewood at Grand Texas Quick Move-Ins.
- Coventry Homes
16 Conroe Quick Move-Ins.
- Tri Pointe Homes
14 at Garden Glen alone.
A meaningful share of the buying decision now happens before a salesperson is involved. Real homes, real prices, and increasingly real readiness dates are visible up front.
Readiness counts are conservative lower bounds where a complete list could not be defensibly normalized.
Competition concentrates in a Montgomery–Magnolia–Conroe corridor
Verified current presence by area across the 25-builder cohort.
Where builders overlap most
Multi-builder communities create direct, side-by-side comparison for buyers. Where nine builders share one community, price, incentive, and readiness differences are immediately visible.
Five patterns across the cohort
Pricing transparency is no longer a differentiator
Public pricing is expected. Every builder in the cohort exposes market-local starting pricing and at least one publicly priced inventory home.
Affordability competition is increasingly financial
Rate incentives, closing-cost support, and direct savings change the economics of the purchase more often than list-price cuts alone.
Inventory is digitally shoppable
Buyers can inspect real homes, see prices, and increasingly see readiness status before contacting a salesperson.
Competition is geographically concentrated
Montgomery, Magnolia, and Conroe form the densest competitive corridor observed in this cohort.
The market is dynamic
Promotions expire, inventory transitions, and communities open. That is what makes longitudinal observation valuable.
How this edition was built
25 residential homebuilders with a meaningful public digital presence and verified activity within the defined North Houston market.
Unit of analysis: Builder company, not individual community.
- The Woodlands
- Magnolia
- Conroe
- Montgomery
- Spring
- Tomball
- Porter
- New Caney
- Willis
Public first-party builder websites and publicly observable digital surfaces. Observed September 2026.
This is a research-period snapshot, not a permanent market truth. Future editions of this market will make change measurable. New to the discipline behind this report? Read Market Intelligence in the Learning Center, or the foundation article What Is Market Intelligence?
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