Houston has more reasons to need a furnished place for three months than almost anywhere else in the country.
The Texas Medical Center is the largest medical complex in the world — 54 member institutions, 21 hospitals, and more than 120,000 people working inside two square miles. The Energy Corridor holds another 56,000 jobs across BP, Shell, ConocoPhillips, Baker Hughes and Fluor. The Ship Channel supports 1.54 million jobs across Texas. NASA's Johnson Space Center runs on roughly 3,200 civil servants and over 11,000 contractors.
Every one of those is a machine that pulls people in for a contract, a turnaround, a rotation or a project, and then sends them home again.
Here's what that market actually looks like right now.
What a month actually costs
On 6 August 2026 Homads listed 58 homes for 30+ day stays inside Houston's city limits. Asking prices ran from $975 a month to $12,000. Half of them sat between roughly $3,000 and $6,000, with a median of $4,800.
That is a wide spread, and it is a long way above the conventional market. RentCafe put the Houston apartment average at $1,345 as of 1 August 2026 — $1,191 for a one-bedroom, $1,508 for a two-bedroom. The gap is what furnished-plus-utilities-plus-no-annual-lease costs you.
Two things about the shape of it are worth knowing before you start looking.
Houston's furnished stock is unusually large. Of the 58 homes, 44 have three or more bedrooms — and 15 of those have four, three have five, one has six. Only six are one-bedrooms. That is not an accident: this inventory has been built for relocating families, for crews sharing, and for insurance placements moving a whole household. If you are one person on a hospital contract, you are shopping in the smallest part of the market.
There is more at the bottom end than you'd expect. Nine listings sit under $2,000 a month, which is more genuinely affordable furnished supply than most cities this size have. They go quickly, and they are not concentrated near the Medical Center.
Numbers move. Everything above came off the live listings on 6 August 2026 — it's worth checking the current set before you plan around it.
Where to stay, depending on why you're here
Houston is enormous and almost entirely car-dependent. The only question that matters is what you need to be near.
Texas Medical Center — 77054, 77021, 77004. ZIP 77054 is the Astrodome and South Main area directly adjacent to the TMC, ten to fifteen minutes door to door in normal traffic. 77021 sits immediately east, one to three miles out. 77004 covers the Third Ward and the Museum District edge and gets you the TMC and downtown from the same address. If you're on contract at Houston Methodist, Memorial Hermann, MD Anderson, Texas Children's or Ben Taub, this is the cluster.
Downtown, Midtown and the inner loop — 77003, 77007, 77009. 77003 is EaDo, immediately east of downtown. 77007 is Rice Military, Cottage Grove and the Washington Avenue corridor, two to three miles west. 77009 covers Woodland Heights and Lindale Park, ten to fifteen minutes northwest. All three are walkable by Houston standards, which is a real qualifier rather than a joke.
The Ship Channel and the east side — 77015. Under fifteen minutes to the Port, twenty to twenty-five to downtown. If you're on a turnaround, a plant contract or logistics work, being east saves you an hour a day. It is not convenient to the Medical Center.
Northwest and the airport — 77088. Acres Homes and the area inside Beltway 8. Sensible if you're flying in and out of Bush Intercontinental most weeks, and more house for the money. Twenty-five to forty-five minutes to downtown depending on the hour.
The one Houston question nobody else has to ask
Check the flood history of the specific address. Not the neighborhood — the address.
Parts of nearly every ZIP above have flooded in a major storm, including ones nowhere near a bayou. Two properties on the same street can sit in different flood zones. Ask the host directly whether the place has taken water, ask which flood zone it's in, and look it up yourself before you sign for six months.
This is also why Houston has one of the largest insurance-placement rental markets in the country. A lot of the furnished stock here exists because somebody's house flooded and their adjuster needed to put them somewhere for eight months.
Why 30 days is the line that matters
Houston's short-term rental ordinance took effect on 1 January 2026 — registration, fees, enforcement, the lot. It defines a short-term rental as a dwelling rented for less than 30 consecutive days. A stay of 30 days or more sits outside it entirely.
The tax side is where Houston is different from anywhere else, and it's worth real money. Houston's combined hotel occupancy tax is 17% — 6% state, 7% city, 2% Harris County, and 2% to the Harris County-Houston Sports Authority. Under Texas law, anyone with the right to occupy for 30 consecutive days counts as a "permanent resident" and is exempt from all of it.
Give the host written notice up front that the stay is 30+ days and no tax is due on any of it. Skip that step and it applies to the first 30 days and drops off on day 31. On a $4,800 month, that first-30-days mistake costs about $816 you didn't have to spend.
Does the time of year matter?
Two things, and only one of them is about price.
Hurricane season runs 1 June to 30 November. This is the practical one. Hurricane Beryl gave Houston roughly 48 hours' notice in July 2024 and knocked out power to more than 2.7 million customers. If your stay spans those months, ask the host what happens if the power goes out for a week — who pays, whether the lease pauses, whether there's a generator. Get the answer before you need it.
The Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo takes over late February and most of March. The 2027 edition runs 2 to 21 March. It moves nightly rates hard and monthly rates barely at all, so a stay spanning it is usually a better deal, not a worse one.
And the heat is real. August averages a high around 95°F with morning humidity above 90%. Ask what the electricity bill actually was last August before agreeing to a stay where utilities aren't included — in Houston that number is bigger than you are expecting.
Who's actually renting here
Travel clinicians on contract at the Medical Center. The largest single group, and the one competing hardest for the small end of the inventory.
Energy and project workers — engineering contracts in the Energy Corridor, plant turnarounds along the Ship Channel, EPC assignments that run four to nine months.
Insurance and ALE placements — households displaced by flood, fire or storm damage, placed by an adjuster, often for longer than anyone first expects.
Relocations — Houston announced 683 business expansion and relocation projects in 2025, and the Greater Houston Partnership expects 30,000-plus new jobs in 2026. A lot of those people arrive months before they buy.
One thing those four have in common: none of them knows their exit date precisely at the point of booking. If you're a host here, that's the thing worth designing your listing around.
Where to start
Everything currently available for 30+ day stays in and around Houston sits on one page: Mid-term rentals in Houston, TX. It shows more than the 58 inside the city limits, because it reaches into the wider metro. Filter by beds, price and amenities, and message hosts directly — there's no commission taken on either side.
If you're new to the format, or trying to explain it to an employer or an adjuster, What are mid-term rentals? covers the basics.
Listing counts and prices in this article were read from live Homads data on 6 August 2026 and will change.