Brownsville, Texas.
Typical home $194,705 (+1.3% in a year), asking rent $1,703 (+5.9%). Brownsville-Harlingen, TX metro.
to buy the typical home at today's mortgage rate — +$607 (+146%) since Jan 2020.
- 1 year
- Up $2,567 +1%
- $192,138$194,705 since Sep 2025
- 5 years
- Up $45,733 +31%
- $148,973$194,705 since Sep 2021
Monthly payment to buy the typical home
Home value × that month's 30-year mortgage rate, 20% down, principal and interest. This is the line households feel: prices and rates compound each other.
- Brownsville$1,022
- Texas$1,556
- United States$1,922
At the last five years' pace, a typical home here doubles in price every 13 years.
Typical home values in Brownsville, TX rose 1.3% over the past year — in step with the nation.
Asking rents in Brownsville, TX rose 5.9% over the past year — faster than the nation's +2.7%.
Owning the typical home in Brownsville runs $230/mo less than renting one. The gap peaked at $491 in Dec 2021.
That is $1,473 a month against $1,703 rent: a $1,022 mortgage payment, plus $243 property tax and $208 insurance & upkeep.
Owning vs renting — Brownsville
The owning line is the typical home's monthly payment at that month's rate, plus property tax and insurance & upkeep; the renting line is the typical asking rent; the grey line is the mortgage payment on its own. Same homes, same months, both ways of paying for a roof.
- Owning all in$1,473
- Renting$1,703
- Mortgage only$1,022
Property tax · $243/mo 1.50% of value a year — the ACS 2020-2024 median bill over the median home value for Cameron County, TX
Insurance & upkeep · $208/mo insurance, maintenance and repairs together, from the BLS Consumer Expenditure Survey — the national figure for mortgaged homeowners, scaled to this market's home value. BLS publishes the three bundled and they cannot be split.
Both are priced off the same month's home value, so they rise with the market. Neither is a quote — a specific home's bill depends on its assessment, its age and its insurer.
Living in Brownsville, Cameron County, Texas
Brownsville is a city of 186,738 people in Cameron County. Half its households earn more than $52,130 a year and half less, against $52,601 across Cameron County; 24% of its people live below the poverty line. 62% of its homes are lived in by their owners and 38% are rented. Unemployment in Brownsville was 6.8% in August 2026, and Cameron County had 1.2% fewer jobs in 2025 than the year before. The most residents work in schools and health care, then shops.
Written by AI Claude Sonnet 5.5 wrote this on 23 October 2026 from the figures here, a list of nearby places and what it knows. It can be wrong or out of date.
What it’s like
The place. Brownsville is a city on the Texas border with a younger population than most of the country, and incomes just below the county's. More households here are lived in by their owners than rent, though a good share of residents live below the poverty line. Winters are very mild, with the coldest days still pleasant by most standards, while summers get hot, with August the warmest month.
Work. Many residents work in schools, hospitals and social care, followed by shops, professional and business services, and restaurants, hotels and entertainment. Valley Regional Medical Center, Valley Baptist MED Cntr Brownsville and Rich Products Brownsville are among the largest workplaces in town. Unemployment has come down over the past year, though across Cameron County there were slightly fewer jobs last year than the year before.
Things to do. Palo Alto Battlefield National Historical Park is a protected area in or beside town, and the Gladys Porter Zoo and Fort Brown are both a short drive away. For more open country, Laguna Atascosa National Wildlife Refuge is a longer drive away, and Starbase is a longer drive away too.
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- 59,839households
- 24%of adults have a degree
- 24%below the poverty line
- 21 mintypical commute
- 8%work from home
What residents work in
Employed residents by industry, from the Census survey. Cameron County had 154,673 jobs in 2025, 1.2% fewer than the year before (Bureau of Labor Statistics).
Weather through the year
Coldest in January, with highs near 70° and lows near 50°; warmest in August, with highs near 94° and lows near 77°.
Average daily high and low, 1991–2020, at the Weather Office Brownsville weather station, 6 miles away (NOAA).
Largest workplaces in Brownsville
- Valley Regional Medical CenterGeneral hospital781FTE
- Valley Baptist MED Cntr BrownsvilleGeneral hospital684FTE
- Rich Products BrownsvilleSeafood and seafood products manufacturing490
- National Electric Coil CompanyCoils for motors and generators manufacturing413
- WalmartWarehouse clubs and supercenters346
- WalmartWarehouse clubs and supercenters328
- H-E-BRetail294
- Creative Liquid Coatings, Inc. BrownsvilleReflectors, plastics, manufacturing277
Staff on average in 2025, as each workplace reported it to OSHA with its injury records: 43 workplaces with 20 or more staff, 6,867 people in all. Hospitals come from their Medicare cost reports (CMS, 2023); FTE marks full-time equivalent staff. Not listed: many offices and banks, which need not report to OSHA; military bases, whose staff OPM withholds; and, in about half the states, city and county governments.
Natural hazards
- HurricanesRelatively high
- Cold wavesRelatively high
- HailRelatively moderate
- Heat wavesRelatively moderate
- Ice stormsRelatively moderate
FEMA’s National Risk Index (December 2025) rates the risk each natural hazard poses to the people, buildings and farms in Brownsville’s census tracts, against the rest of the country; all of them together, relatively moderate. It is meant for planning, not a substitute for a local risk assessment or a flood map: FEMA’s index.
From the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2020 census and its American Community Survey (2020–2024 five-year estimates), and the Bureau of Labor Statistics. A survey, so each figure has a margin of error, and figures it is not sure of are left out. More on Cameron County and the Brownsville-Harlingen, TX metro.
Brownsville home values
Zillow measures a city over its municipal boundary. Against the state and national figures, mid-tier homes, smoothed and seasonally adjusted.
- Brownsville$194,705
- Texas$296,424
- United States$366,157
Levy by levy, and a check of one home’s own bill, the site covers Ohio’s property tax.
Sellers are cutting prices on about 1 in 5 Brownsville listings, and the typical home goes pending in 49 days — the market is heating up.
When this market ran hot
Each cell is that month's year-on-year home-value growth. Read left to right, top row is the latest year — the 2021–22 band is the boom.
Market heat, inside the city limits
Share of listings with a price cut
The early-warning dial: sellers cut when buyers stop reaching. Rising cuts cool a market months before prices notice.
- Brownsville19.25%
- United States26.90%
Days to pending
How long the typical listing takes to go under contract.
- Brownsville49
- United States27
Homes for sale
Active for-sale inventory. More supply hands power to buyers.
- Brownsville447
New listings per month
Sellers arriving at the market.
- Brownsville86
Median sale price
What buyers actually paid — closed sales, not asking prices.
- Brownsville$225,132
- United States$371,407
Zip codes with a Brownsville address
A different geography, not a breakdown. The figure above covers the municipality; these zips cover everywhere the Post Office calls Brownsville — often including townships beyond the city limits. Both come straight from Zillow, and they are not expected to average out.
Zip codes in Brownsville
| Zip activate to sort by Zip | Place activate to sort by Place | Population sorted descending, activate to sort ascending | Rent activate to sort by Rent | Home value activate to sort by Home value |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 78521 | Brownsville | 87,380 | $1,609 | $169,028 |
| 78520 | Brownsville | 64,740 | $1,521 | $189,048 |
| 78526 | Brownsville | 60,012 | $1,897 | $235,340 |