Austin and Dallas run urban and event-driven STR economies. Houston layers tropical-climate risk over a major metro. San Antonio adds a historic tourism core, the Hill Country runs rivers and ranch properties, and the coast, Galveston to South Padre, is a wind market. Pricing, appetite, and policy structure vary dramatically across them.
Hail, flood, and coastal windNorth Texas is hail country, and roof claims dominate, which is why carriers scrutinize roof age and maintenance records there above all else. Houston and the river corridors carry serious flood exposure, a lesson written in Harvey and re-taught by the 2025 Hill Country flooding, and flood is excluded from standard forms statewide. On the coast, much of the wind risk runs through the state windstorm association rather than the private market, with its own rules and limits.
Hail claims fail on inadequate roofing records, especially where prior storms went unrepaired or undocumented. Flood losses fail because no flood policy existed. Coastal wind claims get parsed against association requirements, and properties in prior-loss areas are denied when repairs can’t be proven.
Texas has no statewide STR licensing, and repeated preemption efforts have left regulation to the cities, which use it: Austin, Dallas, San Antonio, and Fort Worth all run registration regimes with materially different rules, and enforcement postures shift with each council term. In Texas, the city you buy in is a bigger regulatory variable than the state you’re in.