In June 2026, the median sale price in The Woodlands' 77381 ZIP code was $625,000. In July it was $417,000. In August it was $479,000. Taken at face value, the ZIP lost a third of its value in four weeks and then got some of it back. Homes in central Woodlands did not change that much over one summer. What changed was the set of homes that closed.
The monthly ZIP-code charts that Community Impact publishes for The Woodlands area are a useful public window into the market. They also reach readers as headlines. One of the August stories ran under the line that 77380 saw a $261,000 drop in median home price since July 2025. The number was accurate. It came from 25 closings. A buyer comparing parts of The Woodlands needs both numbers, and the second one decides how much the first can be trusted.
Three months, four ZIP codes, one pattern
Here are the most recent three months in the four ZIP codes that cover most of The Woodlands' established villages, taken from Community Impact's charts. August 2026 is the latest month published. As of October 10, a September report had not yet been released.
| ZIP | June 2026 median / sales | July 2026 median / sales | August 2026 median / sales |
|---|---|---|---|
| 77380 | $498,000 / 24 | $505,000 / 25 | $354,000 / 20 |
| 77381 | $625,000 / 53 | $417,000 / 54 | $479,000 / 25 |
| 77382 | $674,000 / 61 | $762,000 / 42 | $656,000 / 41 |
| 77389 | $559,000 / 58 | $518,000 / 60 | $557,000 / 45 |
The ZIPs that move most are the ones with the fewest sales. 77380 closed between 20 and 25 homes a month this summer, and its median fell $151,000 from July to August. 77382 moved by about $100,000 each month in alternating directions, up $88,000 and then down $106,000. 77389 posted the most sales of the four ZIPs in July and August and was a close second in June. Its median stayed within a $41,000 band all summer.
Last year shows the same pattern. In 2025, 77380's median ran $613,000 in June, $766,000 in July and $585,000 in August. That makes the $261,000 year-over-year decline less dramatic than it sounds. July 2025 was the highest of those three months, and a comparison against the peak of a jumpy series will look bad almost every time.
What a median of 20 sales is made of
A median is the middle sale. With 20 closings, it is roughly the tenth or eleventh home on a sorted list. Shift two or three sales from one end of the list to the other and the middle shifts with them.
The Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City explains the mechanism in its guide to aggregate house price measures. Homes differ in location and physical attributes. The homes that sell in a given period may not represent the overall stock. When the mix of sales shifts, a median or average can move with no matching change in underlying values. The paper also notes that simple measures such as a median do not control for these differences, and that a changing sample can produce short-term volatility.
In 77380, that mix covers a very wide range. The ZIP takes in the south and east side of The Woodlands around Town Center. Howard Hughes has described Hughes Landing as a mixed-use development with multifamily housing, located just north of the established East Shore residential community. A month that closes more condos and townhomes near the Waterway produces a different median than a month that closes a few East Shore estates. Neither month says much about what any particular home is worth.
Community Impact's data does not break sales down by property type, so these sources cannot prove that the August drop in 77380 came from a change in mix. What the data does show is that 20 sales is too few to tell a mix shift from a real price change. Days on market in 77380 fell from 63 in August 2025 to 38 in August 2026. A ZIP whose values were actually falling would not usually be selling homes faster than it did a year earlier.
ZIP lines do not follow village lines
The second problem is geographic. Buyers often treat The Woodlands as a set of villages, while the market data is organized by postal ZIP code, and the two maps do not line up.
The Woodlands Township's village directory lists eight villages: Alden Bridge, Cochran's Crossing, College Park, Creekside Park, Grogan's Mill, Indian Springs, Panther Creek and Sterling Ridge. It directs residents to an address lookup to find which village they are in. As a rough guide, 77380 covers the south and east side, 77381 the center, 77382 the west, 77384 the College Park area, 77385 the area east of I-45, and 77375 and 77389 the Creekside Park area. That is an approximation, and the edges matter.
College Park shows the problem clearly. The College Park Village Association says the village mainly covers Harper's Landing, Grogan's Forest and Windsor Hills. The Township lists Harper's Landing Park at a 77385 address, while College Park as a whole is usually associated with 77384. So one village's sales are spread across two ZIP medians, and each of those ZIPs also includes homes outside the village.
77389 extends even further. It contains Creekside Park, and Community Impact has also placed Auburn Lakes, a Spring-Klein subdivision outside The Woodlands, in 77389. In August 2026, 77389 had the largest median gain in the area, up $167,000 from August 2025 to $557,000. It was also the only one of eight ZIPs where sales rose. Those numbers describe the whole postal area. A buyer focused only on Creekside Park cannot tell from the ZIP figure how much of the gain came from inside the village.
The numbers that hold steadier
If a single month's median is mostly noise, the sales count and days on market are more reliable, because they come from every closing and not just the middle one.
In August 2026, homes sold fell in seven of the eight Woodlands-area ZIPs compared with August 2025. 77381 closed 25 homes, down from 51 a year earlier. Fewer sales means each ZIP's median rests on less data, so the volume decline makes the price figures weaker evidence.
Days on market split the area in two. In August 2026, 77380, 77381 and 77382 sold faster than in August 2025, at 38, 35 and 31 days. 77384 and 77385 slowed to 98 and 94 days, from 69 and 71. The medians in 77384 and 77385 rose modestly over the same period, to $388,000 and $323,000. Rising medians with homes taking far longer to sell is the kind of mismatch a median alone would hide.
For broader context, the Houston Association of Realtors reported 5.3 months of single-family inventory across Greater Houston in August 2026. Average days on market were 54, compared with 52 a year earlier. Across the region, sales of homes priced from $500,000 to $999,999 fell 16.5 percent year over year, while sales at $1 million and above fell 2.1 percent. These are metro-wide closing counts, not Woodlands figures. They show that volume is changing at different rates in different price bands, and that matters a great deal in ZIPs where a handful of sales in one band can move the median.
Reading the next report
When Community Impact publishes September's numbers, a few checks will show what a headline can support:
- Read the sales count before the price. Below about 30 closings, a large median move is as likely to reflect the mix of homes as a change in value.
- Line up at least three months. The June to August table above shows more than any single month in it.
- Check days on market against the price. A rising median with slower sales, as in 77384 and 77385 this August, and a falling median with faster sales, as in 77380, both point to something other than a simple price trend.
- Narrow to the village and the property type. The comparison that answers a buyer's question looks like East Shore estates against East Shore estates, or Carlton Woods against Carlton Woods. A ZIP median mixes too many kinds of homes to answer it.
About 44.3 percent of all August 2026 sales in the area were priced between $200,000 and $399,999. In ZIPs where most sales are in that range, a few higher-priced closings can move the median a long way. That makes the median least useful for buyers of high-end properties.
A few common questions
Did home values in 77380 really drop $261,000? The July 2026 median was $261,000 below July 2025, on 25 sales. July 2025 was also the high point of a volatile series, and days on market in the ZIP have been falling. The data cannot separate a change in value from a change in which homes sold.
Is 77389 the same as Creekside Park? No. Creekside Park is in 77389, and so are Spring-Klein subdivisions outside The Woodlands, such as Auburn Lakes. The Township's address lookup is the reliable way to confirm which village a specific home is in.
Where is the September data? As of October 10, 2026, the most recent all-ZIP report covers August 2026 and was published September 16.
A ZIP median gives a rough idea of a neighborhood. It can't price a specific home, especially at the high end, where one closing can swing the figure. If you are weighing a sale or a purchase in The Woodlands, Carol Wolfe Properties can show you how comparable homes in your own village and price range have actually sold. Request a Confidential Home Valuation.
