The public housing record — what the county posted, the appraisal district recorded, and the taxing units sued over. No listings, no forecast.
Housing
What does the public record actually say about housing in Deer Park?
This is the housing record, not the housing market. Every figure below comes from a county or appraisal-district record a resident can open: what the county posted, what the appraisal district recorded, what the taxing units filed suit over. What is not here is deliberate — no sale prices, no listings, no months-of-supply, no forecast. Those are licensed or predictive, and the Council does not put them on the civic record.
Distress — the tax-sale and foreclosure record
When taxes go unpaid long enough, the taxing units sue and the property goes to the courthouse auction. That suit is a public record with a cause number. On the Harris County delinquent-tax sale list published by the taxing units’ own counsel, Deer Park accounts for 1 of 362 county-wideLinebarger Goggan Blair and Sampson LLP (LGBS) public tax-sa — 0.08 per 1,000derived — ACS 5-yr.
| Property | Status | Value in the suit | Minimum bid | Open the record |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 905 NORWOOD STaccount 0890490000056 · cause 202152044 · precinct 8 | Available for Future Sale | $123,243 | $20,034 | the sale listing → |
Two figures for the same house will not match, and both are correct: the value shown here is the one carried in the tax suit, which was filed years before today’s roll. For 905 Norwood St the suit carries $123,243 while the 2025 certified appraised value is $207,337. The county record governs each figure in its own register; the Council records both rather than reconciling them away. This list is published by one of the firms that prosecutes these suits — a Deer Park property handled by other counsel would not appear on it.
Not yet on this record: bank foreclosure postings.
A trustee-sale posting is the notice a lender files before selling a home at auction — the earliest public signal of mortgage distress. Harris County keeps them, and the Clerk’s foreclosure search returns them back to December 2013. But that index publishes only a document number, a sale date, a file date and a page count — no address — and the notices themselves are scanned images with no searchable text. There is no way to tell which of the county’s postings are Deer Park’s without opening each one. So the Council records what it can open and states plainly what it cannot: Deer Park’s monthly trustee-sale posting count is not established here. It is not zero, and it is not reported. Reading the notices is the named next build. open the county foreclosure index →
Permits — what the city allowed to be built
The appraisal district records every building permit issued against a Deer Park parcel. Filtered to permits issued by the City of Deer Park itself, the file holds 6,428 permitsderived — CITY OF DEER PARK, per desc_r_12_real_jurisdictions.txt, of which 1,611 permitsderived — CITY OF DEER PARK, per desc_r_12_real_jurisdictions.txt were for new dwellings. Against them the record shows 59 permitsderived — CITY OF DEER PARK, per desc_r_12_real_jurisdictions.txt. Four further new-dwelling permits sit in the ledger but not in the chart: their issue dates are unusable as the county file carries them — one typed 2206, three at the 12/30/1899 zero-date the file uses when no date was entered. They are counted here rather than quietly dropped.
The shape is the town’s own build-out. New-residential permitting peaked in 2005 at 8.3 per 1,000derived — CITY OF DEER PARK, per desc_r_12_real_jurisdictions.txt and has run in single or low double digits every year since 2018. Two things sit against that curve: the 2017 rise falls in the year of Hurricane Harvey, and this is the appraisal district’s permit file, which is loaded as HCAD works the roll — the most recent years are the least complete, and the series is cut at 2023 for that reason. The record does not carry a reason for the decline, and the Council does not supply one. Whether Deer Park’s code permits the kinds of homes that are not being built is a separate, answerable question — and it has its own surface.
Values — what the roll says the housing is worth
Deer Park’s 2025 certified roll carries 10,021 parcelsderived — Harris County Appraisal District, 2025 certified roll — 87.8%derived — Harris County Appraisal District, 2025 certified roll of every parcel in the city — at a median appraised value of $261,598derived — Harris County Appraisal District, 2025 certified roll. That is appraised value, the figure before any homestead, over-65 or disability exemption is applied; the value the City actually taxes is lower, and the tax-bill surface carries that split. Homestead take-up is not on this record yet: the exemption figures ride a separate appraisal-district file that has not been pulled.
What the code allows
The permit record says what got built. It cannot say what could be built — that is the zoning ordinance. The Council scores Deer Park’s own code, section by section, against Strong Towns’ Housing-Ready framework on its own surface.
Sources, all openable: Harris County Appraisal District CAMA public download (permits and the certified roll, download.hcad.org); the Harris County delinquent-tax sale list published by Linebarger Goggan Blair and Sampson, counsel to the county taxing units (taxsales.lgbs.com); the Harris County Tax Office sale process (hctax.net); and the Harris County Clerk foreclosure index. Population and household denominators are the Council’s ratified figures (DR-2026-08-06-001): 34,495 residents (Census PEP 2024), 11,999 households (ACS 5-year). Cost-burden and price-to-income are not here — they need a ratified income denominator, and it has not been set.