Type "Houma median home price" into a search bar this year and you can land on three different answers depending on which link you click. Zillow's home value index put the average Houma home at $184,223 as of its March 2026 update. Redfin's tally of actual closed sales for February 2026 put the median at $156,000. By August 2026, Movoto was showing a citywide asking median of $267,000. Three real estate data platforms, all describing the same city, more than $100,000 apart from lowest to highest.
None of them are wrong. They're each answering a different question, and once you understand which question, the disagreement stops being confusing and starts being useful. If you're comparing neighborhoods in Terrebonne Parish, the gap between these numbers is the whole story.
Three Numbers, Three Different Questions
Zillow's figure is an index, an estimate of value across the entire housing stock, occupied and unoccupied, listed and not. Redfin's $156,000 is a straight median of homes that actually closed in a single month, and Houma's sales volume is thin enough that a single high-priced closing can drag that number around from one month to the next. Movoto's $267,000 measures list prices on homes currently sitting on the market right now, not what anyone has actually paid.
| Source | What it measures | Figure | Window |
|---|---|---|---|
| Zillow | Estimated value index | $184,223 | Updated March 2026 |
| Redfin | Closed sale price | $156,000 | February 2026 |
| Movoto | Active listing price | $267,000 | August 2026 |
Redfin's own citywide page scored Houma a 9 out of 100 on its competitiveness index for that same February read, with homes taking an average of 99 days to sell. That single fact tells you the market has room for negotiation. It does not tell you what a three-bedroom house in Sugar Mill costs versus one in Houma East, and that gap is bigger than the gap between any two of the citywide numbers above.
Six Names, Four Price Tiers
Drop down from the city level to the neighborhood level and the picture sharpens fast. Here is what different submarkets inside Houma were showing in mid-to-late 2026:
- Houma East: median sale price around $95,000, down 15.6% from the prior year in Redfin's most recent monthly read.
- Houma Heights: $135,000 over the three months ending June 2026, though that figure was reported up 83.6% year over year, a swing large enough to suggest a small sample rather than a genuine shift.
- South Side: $140,000 over the trailing twelve months, up 25% from the prior twelve-month period, with homes selling in about 92 days.
- Downtown Houma: $178,000 over the three months ending May 2026, reported up 131.7% from the same period a year earlier.
- Sugar Mill: $354,000 over the trailing twelve months, down 2%, with homes sitting on the market roughly 138 days.
Those five numbers span a range of almost $260,000, all inside the same city limits. The older, established neighborhoods, Houma East, Houma Heights, South Side, sit in the low six figures because that's where most of Houma's pre-1999 housing stock lives. Sugar Mill sits well above $300,000 because it's newer construction, larger lots, and a different buyer altogether. A citywide median averages all of that together and hands you a number that describes no actual house.
The $431,000 Question Inside "Broadmoor" Alone
Here's where it gets genuinely strange. Homes.com's own neighborhood page for Broadmoor, a residential pocket inside the larger Bayou Cane area, put that neighborhood's twelve-month median at $650,000, up 24% from the year before. A separate neighborhood analytics service measuring "Bayou Cane / Broadmoor" as one combined area, using data reflecting the fourth quarter of 2025, put the median at $219,145.
Same streets, roughly the same footprint, and a $431,000 gap between two vendors' answers.
A neighborhood name on a listing page isn't a fixed boundary. Two data providers can draw the line around "Broadmoor" differently and land $400,000 apart in the same season.
Broadmoor itself is a quiet residential pocket where streets branch off Park Avenue, a short walk from Broadmoor Elementary, with Southland Mall and Terrebonne General Health System both close by. It sits inside the broader Bayou Cane area, a corridor built around Martin Luther King Boulevard and West Park Avenue that mixes single-family homes with apartment complexes and retail. Redfin's separate page for Bayou Cane as its own city entity, in its most recent monthly reading, put the average house price there at $149,000, up 27.6% year over year. So depending on whether a data provider is measuring the quiet residential blocks or the whole commercial-and-residential corridor around it, "Bayou Cane" can mean a $149,000 market or, folded into Broadmoor, something reported north of half a million. The name on the listing doesn't tell you which one you're getting. The address does.
Why Sugar Mill Sits on the Market Twice as Long as South Side
Days on market tells a parallel story, and it's not a red flag when the numbers diverge, it's math. Sugar Mill's 138-day average compares to a national benchmark of 50 days cited on that same listing platform. South Side's 92 days compares to a national benchmark of 51. Broadmoor's 96 days sits against a national benchmark of 70.
The pattern holds across every tier: the higher the price point, the longer the home sits. That's not a Houma quirk, it's a buyer-pool problem. A $140,000 South Side resale competes for a wide pool of first-time and move-down buyers. A $354,000 new-construction home in Sugar Mill competes for a narrower slice of buyers who can carry that payment, and narrower pools take longer to clear even in a balanced market.
There's a second layer worth untangling here too. Movoto's citywide figure of 187 days on market, reported for August 2026, describes homes currently sitting active on the market, a snapshot of what's unsold right now. Redfin's citywide figure of 99 days, reported for February 2026, describes how long the homes that actually sold took to go from listing to closing, a measure of completed transactions. Both can be true in the same market. One counts the clock on everything still waiting. The other counts the clock only on what already finished. Neither is more "correct," they're timing two different races.
What This Means If You're Comparing Neighborhoods
If you're relocating into Terrebonne Parish, moving up from a starter home, or downsizing after decades in the same house, the citywide median is close to useless for budgeting. What matters is which of Houma's layers you're shopping in.
Ask which specific subdivision a listing sits in, not just which zip code. Sugar Mill, Summerfield, and similar newer-construction communities carry a different price floor, a different buyer pool, and a longer expected time on market than established neighborhoods like Houma East, Houma Heights, South Side, or the historic downtown blocks. None of those tiers is inherently the better choice. They're different products at different price points, and the right one depends on what you actually want in a house, not on which number showed up first in a search result.
If you're selling, a longer days-on-market figure for your area isn't automatically bad news. It may just mean your home sits in a tier with a narrower, more deliberate buyer pool, and pricing and marketing should be built around that reality rather than a citywide average that has nothing to do with your street.
A Few Questions Worth Asking
Why did Downtown Houma's median jump 131.7% in a single year? A swing that large in a small submarket almost always means the mix of homes that sold changed, not that every downtown home suddenly doubled in value. With only a handful of sales recorded in a three-month window, one or two higher-priced closings can move the percentage change dramatically even when the underlying market barely shifted.
Is Houma's market currently favoring buyers or sellers? Redfin's competitiveness score of 9 out of 100 for February 2026, paired with an average 99 days to close, points toward a market with room to negotiate on price and terms. But that competitiveness reading is citywide. A specific subdivision with tight inventory can behave very differently from the average, which is exactly why the neighborhood-level numbers matter more than the headline.
The median you see on a portal home page is a starting point for a conversation, not the end of one. If you're trying to figure out what a specific number actually means for a specific street in Terrebonne Parish, that's the kind of question a local agent answers by pulling comparable sales in that exact subdivision rather than reading off a citywide average. Good Earth Realty has been doing that work from a downtown Houma office for years. Let's find your next home, start your search with a local agent who can tell you which Houma you're actually looking at.
