Which Memorial Is the Villages, the High-Priced One or the Modest One? Reading a Median Listing Price Against a Median Sale Price

Why is one median seven times the other?

The brokerage median of $2,600,000 is a sale price and the Realtor.com median of $372,000 is a listing price, but that is not what separates them. The ratio is 7.0, and no gap between asking and selling comes close to it. The Realtor.com sold median of $500,000 is also 5.2 times smaller than the brokerage figure. The difference lies in what each page counts.

The brokerage page counts single-family homes in the Memorial Villages geographic area of the local listing service, with condominiums excluded and a floor of $125,000 to remove lots and shells. The Realtor.com page counts every for-sale listing in a neighborhood it calls Memorial, which includes Spinnaker Cove Condominiums, Westchester Place Condominiums and several subdivisions of ordinary houses. A median over such a mix is a median of cheap and expensive homes together.

The neighborhood table makes this plain. It names River Forest, Nottingham, Nottingham West, Nottingham Forest, Memorial Drive Acres, Thornwood, Heathwood and others, with the median listing prices shown being $877,995 for River Forest, $907,500 for Nottingham Forest and $1,155,000 for Nottingham. The highest of the three is 44% of the brokerage sale median. No named area on the Realtor.com page reaches the level of the Villages.

The price per foot is a second check. Realtor.com has $203. The brokerage-linked Houston Association of Realtors page has a median of $446.02 in 2024. The second is 2.2 times the first. At the Villages' average size of 5,554 square feet, the average list price of $3,223,216 works out to about $580 per foot, which is another 30% above the 2024 median and shows how much the biggest houses cost.

Source: A Houston brokerage page, the Houston Association of Realtors page and Realtor.com as cited. The 7.0, 5.2, 44%, 2.2, $580 and 30% figures are this brief's arithmetic from the stated figures. The reading of the mix of homes is this brief's inference and is not a statement of any source. Commercial content; not independently verified.

Does the Realtor.com table describe the Villages at all?

The Realtor.com page lists homes for sale in eleven named areas with a count above zero. They are River Forest 11, Spinnaker Cove Condominiums 8, Nottingham West 7, Nottingham 7, Memorial Drive Acres 5, Thornwood 5, Heathwood 4, Nottingham Forest 4, Westchester Place Condominiums 2, Westwick 2 and Woods of Lakeside 2. The sum is 57. The headline count is 302. The table names areas holding 18.9% of the homes.

That leaves 245 homes, 81.1%, in no named area. This is the weakest match between a table and a headline this series of briefs has found. A reader cannot tell where most of the 302 homes are, or whether any of them lies inside one of the a group of villages. The page says that it covers the Memorial neighborhood of Houston, and it names none of Bunker Hill Village, Hedwig Village or the other villages in its table.

The Houston Association of Realtors page does name them. It describes the Memorial Villages as a collection of independent villages including Bunker Hill Village, Hedwig Village, Piney Point Village and Spring Valley Village, served by the Spring Branch Independent School District. Its count of 113 homes is for the Villages boundary. It is 37% of the Realtor.com count of 302, and the two counts cannot both describe the same area.

For an owner, the useful point is that the Villages are a small market. A count of 113 homes with an average price over $3 million is a market of large houses that sell a few hundred times a year. The HAR table shows 234 sales in 2024. That is about 20 a month, and fewer than one a day across the villages. A median over so few sales moves with every large house that closes.

Source: Realtor.com and the Houston Association of Realtors page as cited. The 57, 18.9%, 245, 81.1%, 37% and 20 a month figures are this brief's arithmetic. The reading of the Villages as a small market is this brief's reasoning and not a statement of either source. Commercial content; not independently verified.

What does a sales table that runs back to 2009 show?

The Houston Association of Realtors page gives a median price per square foot and a count of sales for each year from 2009 to 2024. The price per foot was $231.56 in 2009, $267.74 in 2013, $330 in 2020, $349.97 in 2021, $378.07 in 2022, $397.07 in 2023 and $446.02 in 2024. From 2013 to 2024 that is a rise of 66.6%, or about 4.8% a year compounded over eleven years. From 2021 to 2024 it is a rise of 27.4%.

The count of sales moves the other way. There were 321 sales in 2013, 354 in 2021, 291 in 2022, 222 in 2023 and 234 in 2024. From the 2021 peak to 2024 that is a drop of 33.9%. A price per foot that rises while sales fall is what a market of few buyers and firm sellers looks like, and the brokerage page agrees: July sales were up 27%, but pending sales were down 20%.

The table does not say what a house sold for. At $446.02 per foot, a house of 5,554 square feet, the average listing size on the same page, would be about $2.48 million, which is close to the brokerage median of $2.6 million. This is arithmetic and not a valuation. It shows that the brokerage median and the price per foot tell the same story, and that the Realtor.com figures do not.

The same table has a warning for the idea of a trend. The price per foot was $337.81 in 2018 and $333.94 in 2019, nearly flat from 2017 to 2020 ($334.44, $337.81, $333.94 and $330) before the rise. A seller who judges the market by the last four years sees a steady climb. A seller who judges by the last eight sees a long pause and then a sharp move.

Source: Houston Association of Realtors page as cited. The 66.6%, 4.8%, 27.4%, 33.9% and $2.48 million figures are this brief's arithmetic. The reading of firm sellers and few buyers is this brief's inference. Commercial content; not independently verified.

What does the Census say about owners, ages and values?

The postal area that includes the Memorial Villages has 38,288 residents and 18,870 housing units, of which 16,413 are occupied. Owners hold 10,384 of them (63.3%) and renters 6,029 (36.7%). The 2,457 vacant homes are 13.0% of the stock. The median household income is $136,149 and the owner-estimated median home value is $1,127,500, with a margin of error of $69,836, or 6.2%.

The Census value is 43% of the brokerage sale median of $2,600,000, and 3.0 times the Realtor.com listing median of $372,000. It sits between the two pages, which fits the idea that the postal area holds both ordinary and expensive homes. The brokerage median is 19.1 times the median income. The Realtor.com listing median is 2.7 times it.

The stock is middle-aged. The Census counts 4,825 homes from the 1960s (25.6%), 2,859 from the 1970s (15.2%) and 1,515 from the 1950s (8.0%). Homes built before 1980 are 9,269, 49.1%. At the other end, 3,309 homes were built in the 2010s and 491 since 2020, which together are 20.1% of the stock. The median year built is 1981.

A median home of 1981 stock matters for the Villages in a particular way. Many sales there are of houses that a buyer will tear down or rebuild, so the price is a price for the lot. The Census does not see that. It counts the old house, and it counts the new one on the same lot once built. The rise in the 2010s count suggests that rebuilding is part of the story, though the Census does not say so directly.

The median gross rent is $1,786, and the Houston Association of Realtors page shows an average rent of $5,493 on 14 homes, 3.1 times as much. At $5,493 a month the yearly rent is $65,916, which is 2.5% of the brokerage median. The Realtor.com rent is $1,933, which fits the Census, not the Villages.

Source: U.S. Census Bureau, American Community Survey 2020-2024, Realtor.com and the Houston Association of Realtors page as cited. Multiples, shares, yields and gaps are this brief's arithmetic. The remark on teardowns is this brief's reasoning and not a statement of the Census.

Which page should an owner in the Villages trust?

Start with the question of geography. If a page does not name the villages, it is not about them. The Realtor.com page for Memorial does not, and its medians describe a wider and cheaper market. It is still useful for one thing: it shows that the area around the Villages has more than 300 homes for sale and a wait of 44 days, which is the competition a buyer sees when deciding whether to look at a house in the Villages at all.

The brokerage page and the Houston Association of Realtors page are closer. They draw on the local listing service and they cover the Villages boundary. Their weakness is the small number of sales behind each figure. A median over about 20 sales a month moves when a few large houses close, so an owner should look at the trend over several months and at the price per foot, and not at one month's median.

Then match the house. A house of 5,554 square feet, the average size on the HAR page, is compared with other houses of that size, which on the 2024 median would be near $2.5 million. A smaller house on an older lot is compared with other lots, and the land may be most of its value. A buyer who plans to rebuild will not pay for a kitchen. A buyer who plans to move in will.

Last, look at the time. The brokerage page gives 64 days on average, 26 more than a year earlier, while sales were up 27% in July and pending sales were down 20%. A seller who lists today should plan for a two or three month wait, and should ask what carrying that wait costs. A direct offer removes the wait but also removes the chance of a bidding contest, and each owner can weigh the two.

Source: The three Houston pages and the Houston series as cited. The reading of the pages and the advice are this brief's general reasoning and do not value any home.

What does the Houston series add, and what should an owner ask?

The median days on market in the Houston area rose from 49 in May 2026 to 55 in September, an increase of six days or 12.2%. The Villages' 64 days is nine days above the September regional figure, and the Realtor.com page's 44 days is eleven below it. Active listings rose from 32,681 in April to 35,920 in August (Realtor.com, active listings), a rise of 9.9%.

New listings fell from 11,566 in April to 9,512 in August (Realtor.com, new listings), a drop of 17.8%. Homes with a price cut rose from 10,104 in May to 11,876 in August (Realtor.com, price reduced listings), a rise of 17.5%. The regional median listing price was $360,000 in May and $353,995 in September (Realtor.com, median listing price), so the brokerage median for the Villages is 7.3 times it.

The regional picture is of more homes waiting longer and more price cuts, while the brokerage page says that price reductions in the Villages are down 27%. The two can both be true, as the Villages are a small market with its own pattern. They show again that a city-wide figure says little about a group of villages.

An owner can test any offer, public or private, with plain questions. What is the price, and is any part of it conditional on an inspection, a loan or the sale of another home? What will I take home after every charge? When will the sale close, and can that date move? Who pays for repairs a buyer asks for after an inspection?

For a house in the Villages there are more. Is the value in the house or the lot, and would a buyer keep the house or rebuild? What does the flood history of the street and the bayou look like, and what do insurance quotes say? What are the age and condition of the roof, the foundation and the systems in a house built in the 1960s, which describes one in four homes in the postal area? If the sale takes two months or more, how much does an owner pay in taxes, insurance and upkeep before it closes? Readers comparing markets can also read the Highland Village brief and the Spring Branch East brief.

Source: Realtor.com series published by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis as cited. The six day, 12.2%, nine day, eleven day, 9.9%, 17.8%, 17.5% and 7.3 figures are this brief's arithmetic. The questions are this brief's general reasoning and not statements of any source.

What does a private sale change?

Maison Off-Market buys homes directly from their owners. It does not list a home, hold showings or put a home on a public listing. For a Memorial Villages owner, the five benefits are plain. There are no showings and no neighbors talking about the sale. The closing date can be flexible, which gives time to find a new home. There are no commission costs and no closing costs for the seller, and there are no inspections and repairs.

A little arithmetic shows what that is worth. Each 1% of a $2,600,000 sale is $26,000. A seller who gives up 3% gives up $78,000, and one who gives up 5% gives up $130,000. At the average list price of $3,223,216, each 1% is $32,232. This brief does not claim that those are the costs of any sale, since the real figures depend on the agreement the seller signs. It shows how quickly a percentage becomes a sum.

The same arithmetic applies to time. A sale that takes 64 days and then closes 6% below the asking price, which is the gap Realtor.com reports for the wider area, would cost about $156,000 on a $2.6 million listing, before any other charge. A seller who values a date they pick, and a sale that no neighbor sees, may prefer a direct offer. A seller who values the chance of a competing bid on a rare lot may prefer a public listing.

Maison Off-Market speaks only to sellers. An owner who wants to know what a direct offer would look like can use the contact form below, or call 401-219-4207, and ask for a figure with no showings, no listing and no obligation.

Source: Maison Off-Market. The fee and time figures are this brief's arithmetic from the stated numbers and are not claims about any sale.

Methodology and limitations

Prices, days on market, sales counts and the price per foot by year come from a Houston brokerage page updated August 2026 and from the Houston Association of Realtors page, which cover single-family homes in the Memorial Villages area. Listing prices, rentals and the neighborhood tables come from a national listing site page for the wider Memorial area with key indicators as of June 2026. They count different homes and are not independently verified.

Age, tenure, vacancy, income, rent and owner-estimated value come from the American Community Survey 2020-2024 five-year estimates for the postal-code area that includes the Memorial Villages. Shares are calculated from published counts, and owner-estimated value carries a margin of error.

Days on market, active and new listings, median listing price and price reduced counts are Realtor.com series published by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis for the Houston-The Woodlands-Sugar Land metropolitan area. They describe the region and not the neighborhood. The brief makes no forecast and values no home.

Conclusion

The Memorial Villages record shows a brokerage median of $2.6 million against a Realtor.com median of $372,000, a wait of 64 days against 44, and a table that names only 57 of 302 homes. The two pages describe different places, and the Villages are the smaller and more expensive of them.

It does not fix a price for any one home. The choice between a public listing and a private sale comes down to whether an owner would rather compete in a thin market of large houses or take privacy, a flexible closing date, no commission, no closing costs and no inspections or repairs. To see what a direct offer would look like for your home, use the contact form below or call 401-219-4207.