McAllen and Brownsville housing markets are telling different stories

In Pharr, there’s an established neighborhood just south of Interstate 2 and west of U.S. 281 with two freshly built single-family homes. 

Both of the three-bedroom, two-bath houses spanning 1,275 square feet were listed for $195,000 this year. 

One of the homes sold in late October – about a month after being listed for sale. The other remains for sale but has several interested buyers, especially since the seller agreed to $5,000 in concessions and included appliances in the deal. 

Even so,  there are few homes for sale across the Rio Grande Valley under $200,000 this year — something that was common about a decade ago. 

The median sale for a single-family home in the McAllen metro dropped slightly from $245,000 in November 2024 to $239,450 in November 2025. 

But the median sale price in the Brownsville-Harlingen metro continued to increase to $265,000 last month, compared to $260,000 in November 2024. 

“Right now, for every four sellers, there’s one buyer. We have a lot to sell,” said Ramon “Nacho” Pecina III, Greater McAllen Association of Realtors president and owner of Zapphire Real Estate Group. “Some sellers are reducing their prices, giving more incentives.” 

Home prices in general have increased because of the supply of goods and cost of construction, Pecina III said. 

“Ten years ago, this home probably was running anywhere between $110 to $120 per square foot — right now, we’re priced about $160 a square foot. A lot has happened, prices have gone up, material has gone up, labor has gone up.” 

There’s also a record-high number of realtors, more than 2,000 across the Greater McAllen Association of Realtors network, he said. 

While 3,768 homes have already sold across the McAllen-Edinburg-Mission metro area so far this year, there’s no shortage of housing stock. 

As of November, there were 3,175 homes in the McAllen metro area for sale, which is 9.3 months of inventory, according to the monthly report compiled by the Texas Real Estate Research Center at Texas A&M University. 

In the Brownsville-Harlingen metro area, 2,482 homes have been sold between January and November. But there are 1,668 active listings and 7.4 months of homes available for sale.  

That means the Rio Grande Valley is a buyer’s market, as opposed to a seller’s market, which means there are more homes available to purchase than prospective buyers. 

But because there are fewer available homes in the Brownsville area compared to McAllen, it’s a tighter market, so prices have not declined the same way.