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McALLEN — Home values in Cameron County more than doubled over a six-year period, and property tax bills are going up along with it, according to research from the Texas Real Estate Research Center at Texas A&M University.
SpaceX’s arrival in 2014 has led to the area’s rapid rise in wealth, which researchers suspect also contributed to the rise in property values. And with the expansion of SpaceX and other industries in the Brownsville area, researchers expect home values to go up even further.
For longtime residents of Brownsville, the largest city in the county, rising property values could mean rising tax bills. And for some, that means being priced out of their homes, one local real estate agent warns.
But local officials also have a role to play.
Like most cities in Texas, Brownsville is finalizing its budget for the 2026-2027 fiscal year, which begins in October. The process includes setting the rate at which homeowners’ property will be taxed, a decision that could ultimately determine whether homeowners face a tax hike or a tax cut.
The situation in Brownsville could offer a look at struggles other Texas cities may also face — how to handle raising home values brought on by a boom in economic development in a historically low-wage community.
Growth
The rise in home values in Cameron County is outpacing the rest of the state, according to the Texas Real Estate Research Center.
From 2019 to 2025, median property values in Cameron County grew from $75,800 to $171,900, a 127% jump. The median values in Texas, on the other hand, increased by 65%, from $165,000 to $272,400.
Tax bills increased as well. During that same time period, the median property tax bill in Cameron County increased by more than 57% — from $1,740 to $2,740, not adjusted for inflation. Meanwhile, the median tax bill in Texas jumped by 42% — from $3,900 to $5,550.
That growth is expected to bring in an additional $3 million in property tax revenue for Brownsville despite the city’s proposal to maintain the same tax rate next year.
For next year, the city is proposing to maintain the tax rate the same — 60 cents per $100 in valuation.
Bob Torres, a real estate broker in the Brownsville area for 42 years, said he’s alarmed that clients have told him that they want to sell their homes because they can’t afford to pay their property taxes anymore.
“This is the whole big dilemma — who is SpaceX benefiting dollar-wise and who is it affecting negatively dollar-wise?” Torres said.
SpaceX’s record-breaking initial public offering in June allowed the public to purchase stocks in the company, making thousands of current and former employees millionaires, according to a New York Times report. This sudden influx of wealth is expected to further drive home values up in Cameron County, which is home to about 4,300 SpaceX employees.
The company is expanding its footprint in Texas, overall. In Grimes County, SpaceX announced plans to build a semiconductor fabrication plant, the first phase of which will cost almost $17 billion billion and create 3,000 jobs.
But in Brownsville, Torres said most residents don’t receive a SpaceX paycheck and have no direct connection to the company, yet they are facing potentially large hikes to interest rates and property taxes.
“It’s an issue,” he said.
His own home jumped dramatically in value in just four years, going from about $200,000 in 2022 to about $700,000 this year.
That added burden could be devastating for homeowners, particularly retirees and others on fixed incomes whose property tax bill could consume a large share of their income.
“Let’s say you’re being assessed at half a million dollars,” he said. “Where is that half a million dollars? You do not have it. It’s not in your pocket, it’s not in your bank, but you’re being taxed at that.”
Brownsville City Manager Alan Guard said not all home values are rising.
“Definitely some of the houses we have are more expensive,” Guard said.
Guard partly credited rising home prices to SpaceX but also pointed to a new residential development called Madeira, a master-planned community that specifically targets SpaceX, LNG and other corporate employees.
Those properties are valued much higher and in turn impacts surrounding properties, Guard said. However, he doesn’t expect their higher values will impact homes in areas like Southmost, a historic and affordable neighborhood near the Texas-Mexico border.
“I think you would see a lot of property [values] stayed, probably, very close to where they were,” Guard said of their assessed value.
As Guard suggested, higher home prices could be because of the influx of new homes that were built during the six-year time period when the research was conducted, said Lynn D. Krebs, an economist with the Texas Real Estate Research Center at Texas A&M University.
“New homes are almost always going to cost more than a home that is, say, 20 or 30 years old,” Krebs said. “And so, while the median price went up 2.3 times, that doesn’t mean that everybody’s home price went up by that amount.”
The increase in property taxes could similarly be attributed to newer, more expensive homes built during that time.
“It’s a combination of multiple factors, and I suspect that the biggest driver was the fact that you had new housing stock added,” he said.
However, the typical homeowner is expected to see a 10% increase in property taxes under the proposed rate.
For those concerned about a high tax bill, Torres, the Brownsville real estate agent, advised that they prepare to contest their home’s value when appraisal districts assess their home every year.
“Be ready,” he said. “And you have to do your homework.”
Providing service
Another solution for residents who are feeling the stress of a higher tax burden lies with their local government, which has the power to offset rising home values by adopting what is called the no-new revenue tax rate, Krebs said.
The no-new revenue tax rate is the rate that is calculated to bring in the same amount of revenue in property taxes that was brought in the previous year. For Brownsville, the no-new revenue rate would be below what it is currently proposing.
If city leaders had opted to adopt the no-new revenue rate, it could even lead to a tax cut for some homeowners.
“The local governments can actually completely offset the increase in property values, at least the average property value increase,” Krebs said.
He pointed out that the calculation of the no-new revenue rate only takes into account the revenue the city would raise from existing properties, meaning the city would still bring in additional revenue than the previous year from new properties.
“So no-new revenue doesn’t actually mean no new revenue in total. It just means we’re not going to increase the revenue from the properties that were on the roll the year before,” he said.
But Guard, the Brownsville city manager, said that as the city grows, residents want more services from the city and there are limitations on how the city can raise money to provide those services.
“We don’t control it. We don’t control it at all,” Guard said. “We have a set of services that people want.”
Over the last 10 years, salaries for city employees have increased by about 36%, Guard said. Meanwhile, the consumer price index for urban wage earners has increased by about 40%.
On top of employee wages, the cost of healthcare, gas and equipment is also rising.
“People are not asking for less service, they want more,” he said. “They want more stuff done with their streets, they want more parks, they want their parks better maintained, they want more police officers, we need another fire station.”
And the funds they are expected to bring in doesn’t appear to be enough.
Guard said his department requested $10 million for new employees, services, supplies, and materials. They only received $2.1 million.
“We’re not cutting anything, so we’re very sustainable financially, but there’s a strong need there,” he said.
Planning ahead
As the demand for housing increases, local restrictions on new housing construction have come under increasing scrutiny.
Cities can adopt zoning ordinances, for example, that restrict residential neighborhoods to only one home per quarter acre. Neighborhoods could also require homes to adhere to certain design elements, such as brick-facades.
Such conditions could be supported by homeowners who want neighboring homes to meet certain standards, but then that drives up their value.
“There’s this push and pull for trying to increase the housing stock so that people have reasonable home prices, versus those who, well, maybe want to resist that,” Krebs said.
In Brownsville, city officials are in the midst of planning what future housing will look like by putting together a housing master plan. The process of compiling that plan will include hearing from residents on what type of housing they want to see, Guard said.
They are also engaging in talks with companies like SpaceX and Saronic Technologies about housing needs for their employees. Saronic, an Austin-based manufacturer of drone vessels that are powered by artificial intelligence, announced they were building a $3.2 billion naval shipyard in the Port of Brownsville. They expect to bring 10,000 to the Brownsville area over 10 years.
The city commission, Guard said, is focused on ensuring that nobody is left behind as they plan for that future.
“If you can work in Brownsville, you need to be able to afford to live in Brownsville,” he said. “We’re very much sensitive to that and very much taking that into account as we go through this housing master plan.”
Reporting in the Rio Grande Valley is supported in part by the Methodist Healthcare Ministries of South Texas, Inc.
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