Cleburne is the Johnson County seat, about 30 miles south of downtown Fort Worth at the end of the Chisholm Trail Parkway. It has a historic town centre with a century of housing around it. It's also one of the busiest new-construction markets in the region. Those two halves are doing very different things.
Over the three years ending September 2026, Cleburne produced 2,227 closed sales at a median of $287,990. I'm a Texas broker and a Certified Residential Appraiser. Here is what those sales show.
Values are falling, and it's the new construction
Controlling for house size, lot size and build year, Cleburne values are down 1.48% a year, at p = 0.012. On site-built houses only, it's −1.79% (p = 0.001), and with build-decade controls it's −1.94%. The decline is real.
Split by age, it becomes clear where it's coming from:
Houses | Sales | Annual trend |
Built before 2020 | 1,134 | −0.39% (p = 0.65, flat) |
Built 2020 or later | 1,021 | −4.20% (p < 0.001) |
Older Cleburne is holding. The new subdivisions are falling about 4% a year. That's the steepest new-construction decline I've measured south of Fort Worth: in Godley it's −1.68% and in Joshua it's flat.
The raw figures on brand-new houses show it directly:
Year | New: median price | New: median $/ft | New: days on market | Resale: median $/ft |
2024 | $311,990 | $170 | 78 | $168 |
2025 | $297,990 | $160 | 76 | $168 |
2026 | $289,990 | $161 | 86 | $162 |
New-home prices have come down about $22,000 in two years, and nearly four in five new-home sales included seller concessions. By ZIP, the newer 76031 side is down 2.96% a year (p = 0.008), and the older 76033 side is down 0.92% (p = 0.12), not distinguishable from flat.
For a resale seller, this is the key fact about Cleburne. A new house in the same price range is getting cheaper every year, and it's often newer, bigger and comes with closing-cost help. That's the competition.
The historic town centre is flat
The original Cleburne town plat is the largest single "subdivision" in the data: 371 sales at a $212,000 median, on 1,351 square feet, median build year 1951. Controlling for size, lot and age, its trend is exactly flat (0.00% a year).
That's the affordable end of the market, and it's steady. The houses are old, and 1950s and earlier houses come with a specific list:
- Foundation, since pier-and-beam and older slab work on Johnson County clay is the most expensive item to find late
- Electrical and plumbing, where anything original has outlived its design life
- Sewer line from the house to the street, which is worth scoping on a house this age
- Roof, HVAC and windows, where hail sets the roof clock in North Texas
None of that earns a premium when it's done. Across 33,000 Fort Worth closings a new roof measured at essentially zero. But a house that can't pass an FHA or VA appraisal has lost part of its buyer pool, and in Cleburne that matters more than most places.
Financing shapes the market
About half of all new-construction buyers in Cleburne used FHA, against about a quarter of resale buyers. Resale buyers were more than twice as likely to pay cash (22% against 9%).
Two things follow. Condition items an FHA appraisal will flag, like peeling paint on older houses, missing handrails, or a roof near the end of its life, cost a resale seller buyers. And the builders' concessions often go toward the same buyers' closing costs, which a resale seller has to match or offset.
Manufactured homes
Manufactured homes are a small share here: 71 closed sales, about 3%, against 18% in Joshua. Seven were entered in the MLS as "single family" and identified as manufactured only in the description.
Controlling for size, lot and age, they sell for about 33% less than comparable site-built houses. That's the same gap I found in Joshua and Godley. Two-thirds sit on an acre or more, and 29.4% of manufactured-home properties that came to market never sold, against 20.2% citywide. Compare them only with other manufactured homes, and settle the financing questions first: foundation, HUD labels, whether the home has been moved, and its real-property status.
Land
Cleburne had 428 closed land sales over the same three years, at a median of $95,000 on 1.29 acres.
Parcel size | Sales | Median price | Per acre |
Under half an acre | 130 | $35,000 | — |
Half an acre to 1.5 acres | 98 | $78,950 | about $75,000 |
1.5 to 3 acres | 56 | $120,000 | about $59,000 |
3 to 6 acres | 54 | $143,250 | about $30,000 |
6 to 15 acres | 50 | $235,000 | about $22,000 |
15 acres or more | 40 | $625,000 | about $17,000 |
A one-acre homesite ran about $77,000–79,000 in 2023 and 2024 and about $95,000 in 2025 and 2026. Controlling for acreage, parcels under an acre have risen about 14% a year (p = 0.02), while larger acreage has been flat. As in Granbury, land and houses are moving in opposite directions: the lots are getting more expensive while new houses get cheaper.
Land is also hard to sell. 59% of land parcels that came to market in three years never sold, and 60% of the ones that did were bought with cash.
What it costs
- Median close $287,990 on 1,803 square feet, about $164 per foot
- Median lot 8,712 square feet; 14% of sales on an acre or more
- Site-built closed prices ran $48,000 to $2,950,000
- Median 50 days on market at 96.8% of original list; 12% under contract within a week
- 63% of sales carried seller concessions, at a $7,486 median
- Effective property tax rate on resale houses about 1.81%
- 39% carry HOA dues, at a $495 median. In new subdivisions it's 81%
- Parcel-level failure rate 20.2%: one property in five that came to market didn't sell
The stock splits cleanly. 1,030 of 2,227 sales, 46%, were built in the 2020s, and about 13% were built before 1960. There's comparatively little in between.
On a brand-new house, the tax figure in the listing usually reflects the lot before the house was finished. The new-construction median works out to 0.37%, which isn't what you'll pay. Budget from the resale rate and confirm with the Johnson County appraisal district.
What I could not measure
School districts. Most of Cleburne is Cleburne ISD (1,918 site-built sales). The Joshua ISD portion is mostly one new development, Burgess Meadows, and the Rio Vista ISD portion is 52 sales concentrated in a few subdivisions. In both cases the district and the development are the same houses, so I can't separate a school effect from what was built there. I'm not reporting a premium.
Water. Only ten sales in three years were flagged as waterfront, mostly creek frontage. That's not enough to measure anything.
How Cleburne compares
City | Sales | Median | $/ft | Built 2020+ | Days | Never sold | Annual trend |
Cleburne | 2,227 | $287,990 | $164 | 46% | 50 | 20.2% | −1.48% |
Joshua | 902 | $360,000 | $169 | 46% | 50 | 16.1% | flat (site-built) |
Godley | 1,000 | $415,000 | $186 | 78% | 86 | 18.0% | −1.92% |
The pattern holds across Johnson County, and it matches north Fort Worth: resale houses are holding and new construction is falling. Where builders are most active, they set the price, and the price they're setting is going down. In Fort Worth, seventeen of thirty-six measurable ZIP codes are losing value.
What I look at in a Cleburne house
- New, recent or older. A 2022 house competes directly with today's cheaper new construction, and a 1950s house doesn't.
- On older houses: foundation, electrical, plumbing and the sewer line.
- FHA and VA condition items, because a large share of this market's buyers use those loans.
- Site-built or manufactured, whatever the MLS property type says.
- The HOA in new subdivisions, and what it covers.
- The tax figure, which on new construction usually doesn't reflect the finished house.
If you're selling in Cleburne
If your house was built in the last few years, the builders are your direct competition and their prices are falling. Price against what's being built and sold now, not against what you paid. The resale advantage is a finished yard, window coverings, an established street and no waiting, so make those visible.
If your house is older, the market is flat and steady, and the buyer pool is heavily FHA and VA. The pre-listing work that matters is what their appraisers will flag. What to fix before you list, and in what order tests fourteen improvements against 33,000 closings. If the work needs doing and the cash is tied up, Compass Concierge covers it up front and is repaid at closing.
Buying or selling in Cleburne
Twenty-two hundred sales, a historic core that's holding, new subdivisions falling 4% a year, a buyer pool that leans heavily on FHA, and one property in five that doesn't sell.
What I can tell you is what the closed sales on houses your age, your size and your part of town actually support, and how your house stacks up against the new construction down the road.
Browse active listings in this price range, or call or text (682) 207-4310, or send me a note.
Figures are medians and model results from NTREIS listings and closed sales with a Cleburne address for the three years ending September 2026, reported in aggregate. "New construction" means a house sold in or within a year after its build year. Manufactured-home figures include homes identified in the listing description as well as by property type. School attendance boundaries, tax rates, HOA dues, financing rules and market conditions change. Confirm current figures for a specific address before relying on them. Nothing here is an appraisal or a valuation of any particular property.
