Short answer: the pressure in Houston apartment debt is real but narrow. On the screen below, 21 of 239 loans carry a warning sign, $494.6 million of $5.16 billion, while the larger exposure is timing: $1.13 billion comes due by the end of 2030, and 46 of those 55 loans are interest-only.
The screen at a glance
Scope: loans on record against apartment buildings of 100 or more units in the nine-county Houston metro area, one building per loan. Measured 16 October 2026 on loan data dated 23 September to 6 October 2026.
| Measure | Loans | Debt | Units |
|---|---|---|---|
| All loans in the screen | 239 | $5,157.6M | n/a |
| Under pressure (any sign below) | 21 | $494.6M | 6,266 |
| 30+ days late or in default | 13 | $364.2M | 4,576 |
| In workout | 10 | $271.0M | 3,680 |
| Reported coverage under 1.0x | 12 | $256.3M | 3,441 |
| Maturing by end of 2030 | 55 | $1,126.7M | 17,261 |
The signs overlap. Every loan in workout here is also late or reports coverage under 1.0x. Payment status is reported on 79 of the 239 loans ($1.67 billion), so the late count is a floor, not a ceiling.
Where the pressure sits
The single largest is a $60.0 million loan on a 584-unit building, 30 days late, reporting 71% occupancy and 0.88x coverage at 6.6%, maturing in March 2030. The largest in workout is a $54.0 million loan on an 881-unit building, in workout since October 2024, 90+ days late, reporting 25% occupancy and 0.44x coverage at 8.0%. Most of the rest are smaller: the 21 average $23.6 million. Coverage under 1.0x is not limited to late loans. Six of the 12 loans reporting it were still current at the last report, which is the group a lender or a buyer can still reach before a missed payment.
The maturity wall
| Maturity | Loans | Debt |
|---|---|---|
| 2026 to 2027 | 11 | $121.8M |
| 2028 | 5 | $79.9M |
| 2029 | 16 | $389.0M |
| 2030 | 23 | $536.1M |
The wall is in 2029 and 2030, $925 million of it. 18 of the 55 loans carry a rate under 5.0%.
What a 6.5% refinance does
Of the 43 loans maturing by 2030 that report coverage, the median is 1.42x. Re-priced at 6.5%, 6 of them ($91.6 million) fall under 1.0x. We scaled reported coverage by current rate over 6.5%, which is exact for interest-only debt and approximate for amortizing debt. The refinance risk is therefore concentrated in a handful of loans, not spread across the wall, which is the reason to list loans rather than quote a market average.
How this was produced
Titleman reads loan, property and ownership records across 2,100+ sources and keeps the date of each fact. For this page we took every live loan secured by one apartment building of 100+ units in Harris, Fort Bend, Montgomery, Brazoria, Galveston, Waller, Liberty, Chambers and Austin counties, excluded 18 loans that cover more than one property, and counted a loan as under pressure if it is 30+ days late or in default, in workout, or reports coverage between 0.2x and 1.0x (lower readings looked like data errors and were left out). Coverage and payment status are the figures as reported with each loan, not our estimates. Unit totals are shown only for the flagged groups, because one record in the full set carries an implausible unit count.
What this does not replace
It is not an appraisal, a credit opinion or a view on any one borrower. A warning sign says a loan deserves a call, not that the owner will sell, and a loan with no sign can still be a good conversation. A licensed professional reviews every property before anyone acts on it.
Run it on your metro
Signals returns this list for a territory you choose, each property with the reason it is on it and the owner behind it, in your email or CRM. Ask for the Houston list or your own metro and we will run it live, filtered to the assets you buy or lend on.
Prepared by Titleman AI, on behalf of the Titleman team.