Rental market · West University Place, TX · Incorporated city
West University Place, TX: average rent, home values, and rental yield
West South Central · Population 14,982
Why this market does or does not qualify
Overall City Market Score rank #4,564 of 4,812. The standardized Buy & Hold screen cannot produce a complete result for this city.
Supported strengths
Growth 38/100 and Stability 30/100.
Measured weakness
Cash Flow is the weakest category at 13/100.
Missing screen inputs: investor-entry price estimate. Primary evidenced risk: income growth is the weakest measured factor (2nd national percentile).
Data caveat: no missing input is treated as a zero cost. Bring an actual property’s price, rent, taxes, condition, and insurance quote to the calculator.
Why this grade
Overall 24.3 is a weighted geometric mean of the three category scores. Because they are multiplied rather than averaged, their distances from a perfect 100 combine as an exact identity, and each category's share of that distance is the arithmetic below, not an estimate. Cash Flow carries 51% of it, which is what makes it the binding constraint on this grade.
Inside Cash Flow, the shortfall splits over the factors the model scored here, exactly, in proportion to their published weights. The largest component is expense-adjusted yield (weight 22 of the category's 35, 8th national percentile, 66% of the category's own shortfall); next is price to income (weight 13 of the category's 35, 21st national percentile, 34% of the category's own shortfall).
What this is not. It is not a claim that a different value on any one factor would produce a different score or a different grade. Every factor is scored as a national percentile and the grade is a percentile cut against the other 4,812 ranked markets, so this market's position moves only relative to all of them, never on its own. All 13 factors were measured for this market, so no category is carrying a gap.
How West University Place ranks nationally
Each row places West University Place against all 4,812 ranked U.S. markets. The marker is this city; the centre tick is the national median, and the bar spans from that median to the marker, so its length is how far from the middle of the country this market sits and the side it falls on is the direction. Further right is more favorable to an investor: inverted measures (crime, vacancy, price-to-income) are already flipped so higher always means better here.
What a deal looks like here
We can't build a representative buy-box for West University Place yet: no investor-entry price (Zillow Bottom-Tier ZHVI) could be identity-matched to this market. Rather than fabricate numbers, bring your own price and rent to the calculator.
Open the cash-flow calculator →Market Negotiation Leverage
Some seller leverage (32nd percentile among 6,196 cities with Redfin coverage)
Equal-weight composite of three Redfin signals’ national percentiles (days on market 18, months of supply 1.8, sale-to-list 98.9%), direction-adjusted so a higher percentile always means more room for a buyer to negotiate. This is a cross-sectional snapshot against every other tracked city today, not a seasonal or historical baseline for this specific city (no multi-year time series is committed for this data). Not a prediction of what any specific seller will accept. Source: Redfin Data Center. See how this is calculated.
Price & rent history
Home value: no Zillow ZHVI series - Zillow does not cover this city (Census-only). Nothing plotted rather than estimated.
Asking rent: no Zillow ZORI series - Zillow does not cover this city (Census-only). Nothing plotted rather than estimated.
ZIP markets in West University Place
2 Census ZIP Codes (ZCTAs) officially overlap West University Place by land area · 2 data-eligible for subscores. Overlap is Census land-area share, not a population or address share. Each ZIP Code's overall Rental Investor ZIP Score, grade and canonical national rank are shown below (the two component signals, affordability and rental market, are separate percentiles). There is no city-scoped ZIP rank: city overlap isn't a ranking universe, so only the national rank is shown. These ZIP rankings sit in the ZIP universe only, never mixed with, and not directly comparable to, West University Place's city ranking. Vintage: the Key metric column below is Census ACS 2020–2024 (5-year), the same survey release as the figures used above for West University Place itself; a city and a ZIP Code are different geographies, so the same measure can still show a different number at each level.
2 of 2 overlapping ZIP Code areas, scoredgrade, overall Rental Investor ZIP Score and national rank for each, on a separate model from this page's city scoreShow table
| ZIP Code | Overallgrade · natl rank | Tier · overlap | Affordabilitysignal · natl rank | Rental marketsignal · natl rank | Key metric |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 77005West University Place | C 54#6,560 nat | RankedPrimary | 34#16,271 of 20,132 · bottom 19% | 40#14,234 of 20,132 · bottom 29% | 1.9%Survey yield |
| 77025Houston | D 40#13,496 nat | Ranked1.1% overlap | 15#19,888 of 20,132 · bottom 1% | 54#7,797 of 20,132 · top 39% | 3.2%Survey yield |
The honest read
West University Place scores 24/100 overall (grade F): 13 for Cash Flow, 38 for Growth, and 30 for Stability, each a 0–100 score built from the factors in that category. The scenario above shows what a representative investor-entry purchase pencils out to at today's rates. Everything we can measure is in the table below, with its source.
Every factor, shown
The Overall score blends three category scores built from thirteen measured factors: Cash Flow (35%), Growth (35%), and Stability (30%). The table shows every factor; the tag on each percentile marks which category a scored factor feeds. Untagged factors are shown for context but not scored. Every percentile also carries the band it falls in - top 10%, top quartile, above or below the national median, bottom quartile, bottom 10% - so a bare ordinal still reads as a position; the band restates that percentile and adds nothing to it. Every value carries its source and as-of date. How the score works.
| Factor | Value | National percentile | Source · as-of | What it means |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Expense-adjusted yield fallback | 0.9% | Bottom 10%8th percentile · Cash Flow | Census ACS · ACS 5-yr 2020-2024 | Annual rent divided by price, net of a modeled vacancy, tax, capex, and management allowance: the core of the Cash Flow category and what the score is actually computed from. The unadjusted gross yield is shown elsewhere on this page. |
| Price to income fallback | 5.9x | Bottom quartile21st percentile · Cash Flow | Census ACS · ACS 5-yr 2020-2024 | Home price over local median income. Lower is cheaper relative to what people earn. Part of the Cash Flow category. |
| Population growth | -0.1%/yr | Below median28th percentile · Growth | Census PEP · Census PEP 2020→2025 (vintage 2025) + Census PEP 2015→2025 (vintages 2019+2025) | Census population trend for the place, capped at 4.5%/yr before scoring (diminishing returns above that rate): the heaviest factor in the Growth category. |
| Job growth | 1.3%/yr | Top quartile78th percentile · Growth | BLS LAUS (county) · BLS LAUS county annual 2019→2025 (pre-COVID anchor; 2025 is an 11-month average) + BLS LAUS county annual 2015→2025 | County employment trend, capped at 4.0%/yr before scoring (diminishing returns above that rate). A Growth-category factor. |
| Income growth | 0.0%/yr | Bottom 10%2nd percentile · Growth | Census ACS · ACS 5-yr 2020-2024 | Local median-income trend. A Growth-category factor. |
| Rent growth fallback | 2.0%/yr | Bottom quartile10th percentile · Growth | Model cohort median (eligible county or state/population cohort); no city-specific observation. Published 2026-10-06 | A 40/60 blend of 3-year and 10-year rent trend (the model's own weighting). A Growth-category factor. |
| Home-value growth fallback | 2.4%/yr | Bottom quartile10th percentile · Growth | Model cohort median (eligible county or state/population cohort); no city-specific observation. Published 2026-10-06 | A 40/60 blend of 3-year and 10-year price trend (the model's own weighting). A small Growth-category factor. |
| Unemployment | 4.5% | Below median34th percentile · Stability | BLS LAUS (county) · BLS LAUS county annual 2025 (11-month average) | County unemployment rate. Lower is steadier, a Stability-category factor. |
| Rental vacancy fallback | 9.2% | Bottom quartile14th percentile · Stability | Model cohort median (eligible county or state/population cohort); no city-specific observation. Published 2026-10-06 | Share of rentals empty. Lower means more pricing power. A Stability-category factor. |
| Property tax rate | 0.7% | Top quartile76th percentile · Stability | Census ACS B25103/B25077 · ACS 5-yr 2020-2024 | Median tax over median value. A direct drag on cash flow, scored in the Stability category as carrying-cost burden. |
| Months of supply | 1.8 mo | Top quartile83rd percentile · Stability | Redfin Data Center · 2026-05-01 | Listings over sales pace. Under about 4 is a seller market, over 6 a buyer market. A Stability-category factor. |
| Days on market | 18 days | Top quartile83rd percentile | Redfin Data Center · 2026-05-01 | How fast homes sell. Lower means more liquidity and an easier exit. Shown for context, not scored. |
| Sale-to-list ratio | 98.9% | Below median45th percentile | Redfin Data Center · 2026-05-01 | Sale price over asking. Above 100% means homes clear over ask. Shown for context, not scored. |
| Net domestic migration | -8.6/1k | Bottom quartile10th percentile | Census PEP (county) · PEP vintage 2025 | Net people moving in or out of the county, per 1,000 residents. Shown for context, not scored. |
| Building permits | 27.9/1k | Bottom quartile20th percentile | Census BPS (county) · BPS 2025 | New-construction permits per 1,000 homes. More means more supply coming. Shown for context, not scored. |
| Rent burden | 22% | Top 10%96th percentile | Census ACS B25071 · ACS 5-yr 2020-2024 | Median rent as a share of income. Higher means less headroom for increases. Shown for context, not scored. |
| Median year built | 1992 | Top quartile79th percentile | Census ACS B25035 · ACS 5-yr 2020-2024 | Age of the housing stock. Older stock carries more capex. Shown for context, not scored. |
| Max drawdown | not measured | - | derived | Worst peak-to-trough home-value decline on record. Shown for context, not scored. |
| Violent crime | not reported | - | FBI CDE | No agency reported this place to the FBI. We never impute a crime number; where it is missing, the Stability category renormalizes over its remaining factors. |
- † Job growth and unemployment are county-level (BLS LAUS, county FIPS 48201); large multi-county cities inherit their dominant county’s figures.
- Yield uses ACS median gross rent and home value (Census survey data, 2020–2024 average) because Zillow does not cover this city - not directly comparable to Zillow-based yields.
- ACS top-codes median gross rent at $3,501 - the true median here is higher.
- Data flag: cashYield: ACS fallback (no Zillow rent+value).
- Data flag: rentGrowth: ACS CAGR fallback.
- Data flag: appreciation: ACS CAGR fallback.
- Data flag: rentalVacancy: missing.
Where to go next from West University Place
Every link below is this market's own data taken one step further: its neighbours in the ranking, the same numbers side by side, or the same numbers in a calculator you can change.
Nearby in the Texas rankings, and national look-alikes
- Nassau Bay, TXGrade F · score 25/100 · yield 4.3% · $374,600 · #4,540 national
- Breckenridge, TXGrade F · score 25/100 · yield 13.3% · $146,900 · #4,553 nationalZillow ZHVI $136k (2009) to $147k (2026), +8%
- Bay City, TXGrade F · score 24/100 · yield 5.0% · $203,744 · #4,571 nationalZillow ZHVI $123k (2009) to $204k (2026), +66%
- Brownfield, TXGrade F · score 23/100 · yield 9.7% · $127,075 · #4,624 nationalZillow ZHVI $128k (2012) to $127k (2026), −1%
- Eatontown, NJGrade F · score 24/100 · yield 4.1% · $657,360 · #4,568 nationalZillow ZHVI $173k (2000) to $657k (2026), +279%
- East Lansing, MIGrade F · score 24/100 · yield 5.0% · $323,326 · #4,569 nationalZillow ZHVI $165k (2003) to $323k (2026), +96%
- Compton, CAGrade F · score 24/100 · yield 4.2% · $638,376 · #4,562 nationalZillow ZHVI $119k (2000) to $638k (2026), +435%
Compare West University Place head to head
- West University Place vs Nassau Bay vs EatontownThe pre-filled matchup: nearest in-state rank and closest national grade.
- West University Place vs Breckenridge, TXGrade F · yield 13.3%
- West University Place vs East Lansing, MIGrade F · yield 5.0%
- Pick your own opponentAny of the 5,233 tracked cities.
Underwrite a West University Place deal
- Cap rateOpens on West University Place's own entry price and rent. Change either one.
- Cash flow & DSCRMonthly cash flow and DSCR, prefilled with this market's numbers.
- Mortgage paymentP&I on West University Place's entry price at the assumptions shown above.
- All marketsCompare West University Place against 4,812 ranked cities.
- Texas ZIP CodesEvery Texas ZIP Code area (Census ZCTAs), scored separately from the city rankings.
- Ranked listsYield, affordability, growth, stability, price band, or whether rent covers the mortgage.
For learning, not advice. A market screen from public data - not a forecast, not underwriting, not a recommendation to buy anywhere.