If you are moving to Houston for a job in the energy industry, the order of operations is the whole game: lease before you buy, choose the school before the neighborhood, and check the flood map and the utility district before you sign anything. Texas has no income tax, but it has a property tax stack that will surprise you, a flood history that is decided street by street, and, if you are arriving from another country, a set of purchase mechanics that most agents have never handled. This guide is the one we wish every transferee had read before landing.

It is written by Energy Realty, an independent brokerage with offices in the Energy Corridor and in Katy whose relocation program is led by a Relocation Director holding four relocation designations, whose founder lived in France and Gabon before building a brokerage around international clients, and whose book of business shows more leases than sales because that is how energy households actually arrive. We wrote it the way we brief our own clients, with every number sourced and dated.

Why Houston, in numbers

Houston is the energy capital of the United States by any measure that can be checked. The Greater Houston Partnership’s Houston Facts 2025 counts 21 Fortune 500 energy headquarters in the region, 26 Fortune 500 headquarters in all, and 220,038 energy-related jobs across 4,215 establishments in the metro area in 2024. The ten-county metro held 7,796,182 people in the 2024 Census estimate, up from 7,150,233 in 2020, and it is one of the most international metros in the country: 24.8 percent of residents were born outside the United States, rising to 27.3 percent in Harris County and 31.0 percent in Fort Bend County, per the 2023 American Community Survey. The Census Bureau reported in 2015 that at least 145 languages are spoken at home in the Houston metro area, and the Kinder Institute at Rice University found in its 2012 report that the Houston metro was the most racially and ethnically diverse large metro in the nation, with Fort Bend County the most diverse county in the region.

The infrastructure of an international city is here too. Houston’s airports served 62.1 million passengers in 2025, with 72 international nonstop destinations through 29 airlines, and the city hosts consular offices representing more than 90 nations, the third-largest consular corps in the United States. For a family arriving from Lagos, Aberdeen, Stavanger or Dubai, that means a direct flight home and a consulate that can renew a passport.

Sources: Greater Houston Partnership, Houston Facts 2025; U.S. Census Bureau, 2024 population estimates and release CB15-185 (November 3, 2015); Kinder Institute for Urban Research, 2012 report on the 2010 Census; Houston Airports fast facts, 2026; City of Houston Office of Trade and International Affairs. Retrieved August 24, 2026.

Where the jobs are, and where their people live

Houston’s energy employment is not evenly spread, and where your office is will decide which side of the city you should even look at. There are three main concentrations:

• The Energy Corridor, along Interstate 10 in far west Houston, about 15 miles from downtown. Verified campus addresses inside the district include ConocoPhillips (925 North Eldridge Parkway), bp America (501 Westlake Park Boulevard), Shell’s Woodcreek campus (200 North Dairy Ashford), Baker Hughes (575 North Dairy Ashford), McDermott (Energy Center Five, 915 North Eldridge) and Technip Energies (15377 Memorial Drive). The district’s own site also names CITGO, Enbridge, Fluor, Kiewit, SBM Offshore, S&B Engineers and the American Petroleum Institute. More than 60,000 people commute into the district daily.
• Spring, north of the city, where ExxonMobil’s 385-acre campus opened in 2014 and serves as the corporation’s global headquarters, and where Hewlett Packard Enterprise moved its headquarters in 2022. A Spring assignment points you to The Woodlands, Spring and the north side, which is a different guide.
• Downtown and the Galleria, home to SLB’s headquarters on San Felipe and the arriving Chevron headquarters. Chevron announced on August 2, 2024 that it is relocating its headquarters from San Ramon, California to Houston, with corporate functions migrating over about five years.

For an Energy Corridor assignment, the people you will work with live in a triangle: inside the corridor itself along Eldridge Parkway and Memorial Drive; west in Katy and its master-planned communities; and east in the Memorial area and the six Memorial Villages. The corridor is about 11 freeway miles east of Katy and about 15 miles west of downtown, and I-10 between them is one of the region’s most congested corridors. Households typically lease in the corridor on arrival and buy in Katy or Memorial if they stay, with the school decision doing most of the choosing. Our guides to each are linked at the end of this page.

Sources: Energy Corridor District; company contact pages and SEC filings; ExxonMobil Houston campus page; Office of the Texas Governor, December 1, 2020, on HPE; Chevron newsroom, August 2, 2024; distances derived from TxDOT mile-based exit numbering. Retrieved August 24, 2026.

Lease first: the pattern the relocation industry runs on

The single most useful piece of advice in this guide is also the least glamorous: for an assignment of two or three years, lease. There are four reasons, and they are all about information you cannot get from a listing.

1. The commute is only knowable from the actual office. Fifteen freeway miles on I-10 can be 20 minutes or 70 depending on the hour and the direction. A lease lets you test it before you buy a house at the wrong end of it.
2. The school assignment is only knowable from the actual address. West Houston is served by Katy ISD, Spring Branch ISD, Houston ISD, Cy-Fair ISD, Lamar CISD and Fort Bend ISD, boundaries move, and a single master-planned community can straddle two districts; Elyson in Katy, for example, states on its own site that it is served by Katy ISD with Cy-Fair ISD for neighborhoods east of Peek Road. A year in a lease teaches you which streets go where.
3. Flood and tax risk are parcel-level. Two houses a quarter mile apart can sit in different FEMA zones, one inside a reservoir flood pool and one outside, or in utility districts whose rates differ by a full percentage point. You learn this by living here through one heavy rain and one tax bill.
4. The market moves with the industry. Energy Realty’s August 2026 market update noted fewer oil and gas employers relocating people to Houston with the large rental budgets that historically supported the upper end of the leasing market, while leases between roughly $2,500 and $4,000 a month were moving at a healthier pace. The cycle you arrive in is not the cycle you will buy in.

Texas leases have a few features a newcomer should know. Since January 1, 2022, a landlord must give a tenant a separate written notice, at or before signing, stating whether the landlord is or is not aware that the dwelling is in a 100-year floodplain, and if neither box is checked the law tells you to assume it is; the landlord must also disclose if the dwelling flooded at least once in the five years before the lease. Security deposits are governed by state law. Executive and corporate leases in the $3,000 to $6,000 range exist across the corridor, Memorial and Katy, and furnished corporate housing is common along the office corridor for the first 30 to 90 days.

Sources: elyson.com; Texas Property Code Section 92.0135 (HB 531, 87th Legislature); Energy Realty, August 2026 Market Update. Retrieved August 24, 2026.

Schools before neighborhood

For most relocating families, and for nearly every family arriving from abroad, the school decision comes first and the neighborhood follows. Houston is unusual in that international schools carry real weight, because a child midway through an IB or French curriculum needs continuity, and west Houston has four of them within the relocation triangle:

On the public side, Katy ISD covers 181 square miles, reported more than 97,000 students at 80 campuses for 2025-26, and adds roughly 2,000 students a year by its demographer’s projection, which is why its attendance boundaries change regularly. Spring Branch ISD, which serves the Memorial area and the Memorial Villages, enrolled 32,668 students at 45 schools in 2024-25 per federal data. Lamar CISD serves Fulshear and parts of the Katy postal area and describes itself as one of the fastest-growing districts in Texas. Houston ISD and Cy-Fair ISD serve parts of the Energy Corridor and the area north of it. We do not rank schools or characterize them; the district websites publish attendance boundaries and programs, and the assigned campus for a specific address is the fact that matters. Verify it with the district before you sign a lease or a contract, not after.

Sources: nordangliaeducation.com (The Village School, British International School of Houston); lihouston.org; awty.org; Katy ISD, About and September 22, 2025 board news; National Center for Education Statistics, Spring Branch ISD 2024-25; Lamar CISD district profile. Retrieved August 24, 2026.

The money: no income tax, and what replaces it

Texas does not tax individual income. Article VIII, Section 24-a of the state constitution, added by voters in November 2019, prohibits the Legislature from imposing one. For a household arriving from California, New York, the United Kingdom or Norway, that is the headline number in the offer letter, and it is real.

What replaces it is property tax, and a west Houston bill is a stack of separate taxing units, each with its own rate per $100 of appraised value. For tax year 2025:

Add the lines that apply to a given address and you have its rate. Inside the City of Houston in Spring Branch ISD, the stack above sums to roughly 2.17 per $100 before the community college line; in an unincorporated Katy ISD subdivision with a mature utility district it can be similar or lower, and in a young district still paying off its bonds it can approach 2.7 on the Fort Bend side and 2.8 or more on the Harris side. That spread, not the headline, is what a relocating buyer needs to model, and our MUD and property tax guide works through the arithmetic with real district examples.

Three relief mechanisms apply to a primary residence. The school district homestead exemption rose to $140,000 of value with the constitutional amendment voters approved on November 4, 2025, with an additional $60,000 for owners 65 and older or disabled. A homestead’s appraised value cannot rise more than 10 percent a year for tax purposes. And every owner can protest the appraisal district’s value each spring, which is routine here rather than adversarial. The exemption requires an application to the appraisal district, and a non-resident owner who is not living in the home does not qualify for it.

Then add the costs an income-tax state never made you think about: flood insurance where the map or your judgment requires it, windstorm coverage in a hurricane market, a homeowners association fee in most subdivisions, and the utility district’s own charges for water and sewer. The honest comparison is total cost of ownership against total cost of ownership, and it still usually favors Houston, but not by the margin the income tax line alone suggests.

Sources: Texas Constitution, Article VIII, Section 24-a; Harris Central Appraisal District jurisdiction tax rates and Harris County Tax Assessor-Collector rate tables, 2025; Katy ISD board action, September 22, 2025; Fort Bend County 2025 rate worksheet; Texas Comptroller, property tax exemptions. Retrieved August 24, 2026.

The Houston questions nobody warns you about

Every city has local knowledge. Houston’s is unusually consequential, because several of its quirks carry five- and six-figure price tags. These are the ones we raise in the first conversation with every transferee.

Flood pools and flood maps

The Energy Corridor borders the Addicks and Barker reservoirs, two federally owned dry dams operated by the Army Corps of Engineers. Their maximum flood pools extend beyond the government-owned land onto private property, and during Hurricane Harvey in August 2017 the pools reached record levels and did exactly that, while emergency releases pushed Buffalo Bayou through the Memorial area to record heights at every bridge crossing. Since September 1, 2019, a Texas seller’s disclosure must state whether the property lies wholly or partly in a 100-year floodplain, a 500-year floodplain, a floodway, a flood pool or a reservoir, and whether it has flooded from a reservoir release. Read those answers, look the parcel up on FEMA’s Flood Map Service Center and the Harris County Flood Control District’s mapping tool, and price a policy before you offer. Never accept “this neighborhood didn’t flood” from anyone, including us; the answer is per parcel.

Municipal utility districts

Most master-planned communities outside city limits are served by a municipal utility district, a local government that borrowed to build the water, sewer and drainage system and repays the bonds through its own property tax. Texas Water Code Section 49.452 requires the seller to give you a written notice of the district’s tax rate and bonded debt before you sign a binding contract. New districts run high and mature districts run low, which is why two similar houses a mile apart can carry very different tax bills.

No zoning

Houston has never adopted zoning. In the City’s own words, “the City of Houston does not have zoning, but development is governed by ordinance codes that address how property can be subdivided,” especially Chapter 42, and neighborhoods are protected by deed restrictions that the City’s Legal Department can enforce under Chapter 212 of the Local Government Code. The question to ask about any street is what its deed restrictions and homeowners association allow, not what its zoning is.

Clay soil

Much of west Houston sits on expansive clay that swells and shrinks with moisture, which is why slab foundations move and why a foundation report is part of normal due diligence on an older house. Prior foundation repair must be disclosed by the seller. It is not a reason to walk away if the work was done and documented.

Weather

Hurricane season runs June through November, and windstorm coverage is priced and sometimes written separately from a standard homeowners policy. Summer is long, hot and humid. Neither should decide whether you move here, but both should decide when you set up insurance and where you put the generator.

Sources: U.S. Court of Federal Claims, In re Upstream Addicks and Barker (Texas) Flood-Control Reservoirs, opinion of December 17, 2019; Harris County Flood Control District, Hurricane Harvey final report; Texas Property Code Section 5.008 as amended by SB 339 (2019); Texas Water Code Sections 49.452 and 49.4521; TREC Seller’s Disclosure Notice, Form 55-1; City of Houston Planning and Development, development regulations. Retrieved August 24, 2026.

Buying from abroad: the foreign national mechanics

Energy Realty’s founder built the brokerage around international clients, our agents’ bios name Spanish, Portuguese, French, Farsi and Lebanese Arabic among their languages, and we partner with Advancial Federal Credit Union on a program for arriving foreign nationals. So this section is written from experience, and its first point is a change in the law.

For buyers who are eligible, the mechanics are these:

• Taxpayer identification. If you do not have a Social Security number, the IRS issues an Individual Taxpayer Identification Number, applied for on Form W-7, to resident and non-resident aliens regardless of immigration status. Lenders generally require an SSN or ITIN by closing for mortgage interest reporting.
• Financing. Mortgages for non-residents are a specialty product with larger down payments and different documentation than a conventional loan. Advancial Federal Credit Union runs a foreign national program for borrowers living and working outside the United States and a separate program for holders of U.S. work visas and expatriates; the terms are set by the lender and change, so ask for the current sheet rather than relying on anything printed here. An all-cash purchase avoids the question entirely and is common.
• Holding structure. Some buyers purchase through a U.S. entity or trust for liability, estate or privacy reasons. That is a question for your tax and legal advisers in both countries, not for a real estate agent, and it interacts with SB 17.
• Closing remotely. Ask the title company early whether a power of attorney or remote notarization is available for your closing; when it is, a purchase can close before the family lands, and our relocation team coordinates it.
• FIRPTA, on the way out. Under the Foreign Investment in Real Property Tax Act, a buyer purchasing from a foreign person must generally withhold 15 percent of the amount realized and remit it to the IRS, with an exception when the price is $300,000 or less and the buyer will use the home as a residence. It applies both when you buy from a foreign seller, where you as the buyer are the withholding agent, and when you later sell as a non-resident, and it is reconciled on a U.S. tax return. Plan for it from the day you purchase.

Sources: Texas SB 17, 89th Legislature, enrolled text; IRS, Individual Taxpayer Identification Number and FIRPTA Withholding pages; Advancial Federal Credit Union, Foreign National and Energy Realty Inbound USA program pages. Retrieved August 24, 2026. This page is general information, not legal or tax advice.

If you are transferred out again

Most energy careers involve more than one move, and the question of what to do with the Houston house should be answered before you buy it. There are two paths. You can sell, in which case a non-resident seller should build FIRPTA withholding into the timeline and a resident seller should expect the same disclosure obligations that protected them as a buyer. Or you can keep the home and lease it under professional management until you return or the market suits a sale. Energy Realty Management, our property management arm, describes much of its book as homes owned by people who relocated for work and kept their Houston property, and it runs on an owner portal with monthly statements, direct-deposited rent, annual inspections and deposits held in escrow as Texas law requires. The point of doing lease, purchase, management and sale under one roof is that the decision does not have to be made twice with two different companies.

A 90-day relocation sequence that works

1. Days 1 to 10, before you land. Confirm the office address and the assignment length. Shortlist schools by curriculum and address. Decide whether the first year is a lease. Get an ITIN application started if you will need one, and, if you are not a citizen or permanent resident, have counsel confirm SB 17 eligibility before you look at anything to buy.
2. Days 10 to 30. Corporate housing or a short-term furnished lease near the office. Drive the commute at 7:30 a.m. and 5:15 p.m. Visit the schools. Open a U.S. bank account; Advancial’s program exists for exactly this step.
3. Days 30 to 60. Tour leases in the corridor, Katy and Memorial with the school assignment and the commute already known. For each address, check the FEMA zone, the landlord’s flood notice and the utility district. Sign a twelve-month lease with a reasonable early-termination clause if the assignment could move.
4. Days 60 to 90. Settle in. Watch how the street handles a heavy rain. Note what the first tax and utility bills look like for your neighbors. If the assignment extends, the purchase search starts from a position of knowledge, which is the whole reason for the sequence.

Frequently Asked Questions