Elyson sold 404 homes in the twelve months to August 2026 at a median of $470,315. That makes it the third-largest community in Katy by volume, behind Sunterra and Cinco Ranch. It also carries a reputation for being slow. The headline days-on-market figure reads 63, against a Katy median of 28.
That reputation is wrong, and I can show you why with the same MLS data everyone else quotes. Split Elyson into resale homes and builder homes and two completely different markets appear. Resale homes in Elyson sell in 29 days. Builder homes take 71. Nobody publishes that split, so buyers and sellers both work from a blended number that describes neither of them.
Elyson at a glance
I pulled these figures myself from the HAR MLS on 25 August 2026. I searched on the Elyson master-planned community code rather than a subdivision name. That captures every section of the community and nothing from outside it.
| Measure | Sold, 12 months | Active |
|---|---|---|
| Listings | 404 | 218 |
| Median price | $470,315 | $479,950 |
| Median price per sq ft | $179.67 | $185.52 |
| Median size | 2,600 sq ft | 2,668 sq ft |
| Median days on market | 63 | 61 |
| Median year built | 2025 | 2026 |
| Price range | $246,000 to $1,112,088 | $294,000 to $1,059,000 |
Source: HAR MLS, closed sales 25 August 2025 to 25 August 2026 plus active listings on 25 August 2026. Figures are medians, not averages, so a handful of very large homes cannot drag them.
The active listing pool is priced almost exactly where homes are selling
Sellers in Elyson ask a median $479,950. Buyers pay a median $470,315. That is a gap of 2.0 percent. After the days-on-market split, it is the most interesting number on this page.
Compare it to the rest of the area. Across ZIP 77493 the active median runs 16.4 percent above the sold median. In Sunterra, four miles west, the gap is 11.5 percent. A wide gap usually means one thing. The listing pool holds bigger or newer homes than the ones actually trading, so the asking prices describe a market that does not exist. In Elyson the two pools sit almost on top of each other, at nearly the same median size.
For a buyer that means the list prices you browse are close to honest. For a seller it means there is very little room to test a high number and wait.
Resale and new construction are two different markets
Here is the split that changes how you should read everything else. I divided the 404 sales by year built. Homes finished in 2023 or later sit on the builder side, everything earlier on the resale side.
| Measure | Resale, built before 2023 | Builder, built 2023 or later |
|---|---|---|
| Homes sold | 69 | 335 |
| Median price | $402,000 | $479,531 |
| Median price per sq ft | $164.95 | $183.29 |
| Median size | 2,498 sq ft | 2,632 sq ft |
| Median days on market | 29 | 71 |
| Currently active | 61 | 157 |
A resale home in Elyson costs about 10 percent less per square foot than a builder home. It also sells in well under half the time. Size does not explain the gap: only 134 square feet separate the two groups.
The numbers teach this lesson in every new-construction community I track. Elyson states it more clearly than most. Builders price to a rate sheet and carry inventory for as long as it takes. Resale sellers price against what just closed on their street, and their homes move.
Why 63 days on market is not a warning sign
High days on market in a young community measures builder absorption, not weak demand. A production builder lists a home before framing finishes. The clock then runs for months before anyone could move in. Austin Point runs 108 days for the same reason, Katy Lakes 62, Trillium 59.5.
The proof sits in the table above. Strip the builder inventory out and Elyson resale runs 29 days. That sits within a day of the Katy four-ZIP median of 28 and beats Sunterra at 33. Buyers want Elyson. What takes 71 days is a house that nobody could have lived in yet.
Where the inventory actually sits
Run the active listings against the last twelve months of sales. The two markets diverge again. Builder inventory works out to roughly 5.6 months of supply. Resale inventory works out to 10.6 months.
That inversion matters and it cuts against the reputation. There are 61 resale homes competing for the 69 buyers a year who want one. A resale seller in Elyson is not competing mainly with other resale sellers. They compete with a builder two streets over. That builder offers a rate buydown, a design-center credit and a home nobody has lived in.
I would rather tell you that before you list than after ninety days of showings.
Elyson and Cinco Ranch share a developer and sit at opposite ends of the same story
Newland Communities opened Elyson in 2016, according to the developer’s own community page. Newland also built Cinco Ranch, which opened in 1991 and sold out in 2020. Elyson is Newland’s fourth master-planned community in the Katy area, as Houston Agent Magazine reported in 2019.
| Measure | Elyson | Cinco Ranch |
|---|---|---|
| Homes sold, 12 months | 404 | 533 |
| Median price | $470,315 | $550,000 |
| Median price per sq ft | $179.67 | $181.85 |
| Median size | 2,600 sq ft | 3,121 sq ft |
| Median year built | 2025 | 2005 |
| Median days on market | 63 | 19 |
Look at the price per square foot. The two communities sit within $2.18 of each other, yet a Cinco Ranch home is twenty years older and about 500 square feet larger. You pay a very similar rate per foot either way. One buys a mature community with grown trees and a settled resale market. The other buys a warranty and nobody else’s wear. Read the full Cinco Ranch market breakdown if that trade is the one you are weighing.
Brookfield Residential now owns the development, and it changed nothing for residents
Brookfield Residential acquired Newland in a deal that closed on 1 June 2021, as the Houston Chronicle reported. The Chronicle called Elyson the largest residential project in the acquired portfolio. It described a 3,642-acre community planned for 6,000 homes off the Grand Parkway and FM 529, with about 1,400 homes finished at that point.
Brookfield told the Chronicle that the change would not reach residents. The Elyson team and the company managing the homeowners association would both stay in place. Five years on I see nothing in the MLS data to contradict that.
One footnote matters if you compare communities across Fort Bend and Harris counties. The same acquisition brought Cinco Ranch, Greatwood and Telfair under one owner. Four of the communities buyers ask me to compare share one corporate lineage.
Acreage and home count vary between sources
Construction Dive reported 3,600 acres and 6,200 homes when Elyson opened on 22 October 2016. The Houston Chronicle reported 3,642 acres and 6,000 homes in 2021, and the developer’s own material now uses 6,000. The difference is small in percentage terms and it changes nothing about what a home there is worth. I use “about 3,600 acres” and “about 6,000 homes” and leave the precision to the plat.
Schools: four different elementary assignments in nine years
Katy ISD serves most of Elyson. The community has cycled through four elementary schools since it opened. That history is the best argument I can give you for checking your specific address rather than a neighborhood-level answer.
- Bethke Elementary served Elyson originally.
- McElwain Elementary opened in 2020.
- Youngblood Elementary opened in 2023, named for David and Terri Youngblood, who each spent forty-year careers in Katy ISD.
- Boudny Elementary opened in August 2025. Katy Times reported that its attendance zone was carved entirely out of Youngblood’s existing boundaries.
Secondary assignments moved too. Nelson Junior High and Freeman High School both opened in August 2024 and now anchor the district’s northwest quadrant. Before they opened, Elyson students attended Stockdick Junior High and Paetow High School.
Freeman High School carries a detail worth knowing. The district named it for the Freeman family, whose Katy history spans six generations. Elyson itself takes its name from Ely Freeman, who arrived in the Katy area with his family in 1898.
A minority of Elyson is zoned to Cypress-Fairbanks ISD, not Katy ISD
This one surprises people. The developer states it plainly. About 90 percent of Elyson’s planned single-family homes sit inside Katy ISD boundaries, and a relatively small number fall inside Cypress-Fairbanks ISD instead. The MLS backs it up: the subdivision names on several listings read “Elyson Cy Fair”.
You cannot rezone a home from one district into another. That line is fixed. So the district you buy into is a permanent feature of the address, unlike the campus assignment, which moves. Confirm both before you write an offer. Katy ISD publishes a Find My School address lookup. If the address falls on the Cypress-Fairbanks side, use that district’s own attendance lookup instead.
The 2027 rezoning proposal does not name Elyson
Katy ISD has an active attendance boundary modification underway for Elementary #49. The school will open at 6435 Pitts Road in the district’s northwest quadrant. Because that school also relieves Youngblood Elementary, several people have asked me whether Elyson is being rezoned again.
Based on the proposals Katy ISD has published, the answer is no. Both the June 2026 and July 2026 board options name the same kinds of zones: Sunterra sections, Windward, Katy Prairie Estates, Jasek Farms and other northwest Katy parcels. The July option adds part of Anniston. No Elyson zone appears in either version. The district expects a final board vote in October 2026, with any approved change effective August 2027.
That could change before the vote. I check the district’s boundary page rather than a portal listing, and so should you. An agent fills a listing’s school fields once and rarely revisits them.
Amenities
Elyson House anchors the community with a fitness center, pool, game room and event lawn, plus a cafe. Lakeside Landing sits on the shore of a 31-acre lake. It adds a resort-style pool, a lap pool, indoor and outdoor fitness areas and a community building. Elyson Commons covers 145 acres with a sports field, concert lawn, trails and a dog park.
The developer set aside roughly 750 acres for parks and open space, and plans close to 30 miles of trails at buildout. More than 400 acres carry a commercial designation. Orchards planted through the community bear oranges, figs and pecans. Harmony School of Excellence, a public charter, operates a 26-acre campus inside Elyson serving pre-kindergarten through grade 12.
Location, county lines and taxes
Elyson sits off the Grand Parkway near FM 529, in ZIP 77493, north of I-10. Like almost everything called Katy, it lies outside the Katy city limits, in unincorporated Harris County. The City of Katy covers only about 15 square miles. The name on your mail describes a postal area and a school district far more than a municipality.
That has three consequences. You pay no city property tax. Your services come from the county and a municipal utility district. And your total tax rate depends on which MUD serves your specific section, which varies across a community this size.
I do not publish a single blended tax rate for Elyson. I have not verified one that holds across all 57 sections the MLS shows. Ask for the MUD rate for your exact section in writing before you sign. Confirm the current figure with the appraisal district. My explainer on MUD taxes covers how these districts work and why the rate falls over time.
What the builder mix tells you
The MLS shows 57 distinct section names inside Elyson. They run from entry-level product to a Toll Brothers collection listing at a median $572,935 and $200.33 per square foot. Those Toll listings sit at a median 107 days on market, the slowest group in the community. Premium builder inventory usually does.
Eighty percent of the homes that sold in the last year were built in 2024 or later. Sixty-five percent of what is listed today was. Elyson is still very much a builder market, and it will be for years.
Who Elyson suits
Elyson suits a buyer who wants a new home with real amenities and schools inside the community. That buyer has to accept a neighborhood still under construction around them. A resale buyer gets the discount instead, but has to move quickly, because those 69 homes a year go in 29 days.
Sellers get a harder market than the headline volume suggests. Sixty-one resale homes compete for 69 annual resale buyers, and builders hold incentives you cannot match. Pricing to the last comparable sale is not optional here.
Frequently asked questions
Is Elyson a good investment?
Resale homes there trade about 10 percent below builder homes per square foot. That is the discount you would expect while a community still sells new inventory, and it narrows as a community builds out. Cinco Ranch shows the finished version of that arc. Whether it closes on your timeline depends on how fast the remaining sections deliver.
Why do Elyson homes take so long to sell?
Most of them do not. The 63-day community median blends builder inventory at 71 days with resale homes at 29. If you are buying or selling an existing home, the 29-day figure is the one that describes your market.
What school district is Elyson in?
Katy ISD serves about 90 percent of the planned homes and Cypress-Fairbanks ISD serves the remainder, according to the developer. Campus assignments have changed four times since 2016. Verify your specific address with the district before you make an offer.
How much does a home in Elyson cost?
Sales in the last twelve months ran from $246,000 to $1,112,088, with a median of $470,315. Resale homes came in at a median $402,000 and builder homes at $479,531.
Is Elyson in the city of Katy?
No. It sits in unincorporated Harris County, outside the city limits, so there is no city property tax. A municipal utility district provides water and sewer service.
How does Elyson compare to Sunterra?
Sunterra sold 979 homes at a $309,990 median against Elyson’s 404 at $470,315. Sunterra is larger, cheaper and moves faster. Elyson is a step up in price per square foot and in home size. It also has a longer-established amenity program and four Katy ISD campuses in or beside the community.
Buying from a builder here? The contract, the warranty and the inspection schedule all work differently than they do on a resale, and most of what protects you happens before the slab is poured. My guide to buying new construction in Texas covers registering your agent on the first visit, the three phase inspections worth paying for, and what to read in the builder contract before you sign.
Talk to me about Elyson
I have sold real estate in the Houston area since 2002 and my office is in Katy. I pull this data out of the MLS myself rather than repeating what a portal publishes. That is why this page can tell you what a resale home does that a builder home does not.
Katy residents voted my brokerage, C.R. Realty, number one Best Real Estate Agency/Team in the Best of Katy 2026 awards. The category held 44 agencies and teams. My family has lived and worked in Katy since the 1970s. This is not a market I picked off a map.
If you are buying in Elyson, I will put the resale comparables beside the builder inventory. You will see the gap before you choose. If you are selling, I will price you against both. No pressure, no hype, and no promises I cannot keep.
Zach Emmanouil, Broker Associate, ZACH RE GROUP at C.R. Realty
ABR · CNE · CLHMS · SRES · 281-387-1535 · zach@zachregroup.com