Houston: A Top Local Market to Watch in 2027
No list of local markets offering the most electrical sales growth potential would be complete with including Houston–The Woodlands–Sugar Land, TX, MSA. The market is massive, and with $4.397.8 million in estimated electrical sales potential for 2Q 2026 (up +3.1% YOY), is one of only two markets topping $4 billion in electrical sales potential. The Dallas metro is the other one with $4.7 billion in electrical sales.
No other market area in the United States can boast of current demand for electrical products from such as wide variety of end markets, which for Houston include energy and petrochemicals, electric utilities, port infrastructure, data centers, healthcare, airports, water/wastewater and residential housing. Also feeding the demand for electrical products is Houston’s robust population growth, with 735,343 new residents moving into the metro from 2020 to 2025 and 212 new residents moving to Houston each day last year. And even though Houston is seeing large declines through June in single-family (-5.8% YOY) and multi-family building permits (-49.3%), homebuilders have still pulled more single-family permits (24,228 permits) than any other MSA and the 3,985 multi-family permits pulled year to date through June ranks twelfth among all MSAs.
The roster of multi-billion-dollar construction projects in the Houston pipeline highlight the diversity in electrical market drivers. You have CenterPoint Energy’s $66.7 billion multi-year capital investment program; a $2.1-billion ship channel project in Port Houston; the $1.4-billion Houston Methodist Centennial Tower now being built; a $2-billion modernization of the George R. Brown Convention Center; and the $1.45-billion terminal redevelop project at Bush Intercontinental Airport. Another big project quite possibly topping $1 billion in total construction value is the Exxon Mobile Baytown expansion project in Baytown, TX.
Along with these mega-projects are hospital expansion work valued at $200 million or more at Memorial Hermann Hospitals in Cypress, Katy and Sugerland, TX; and Houston Methodist West in West Houston/Katy, TX.
ESTIMATED ELECTRICAL SALES
2Q 2026 Total Sales Estimate: $4,397.8 million
2026 Electrical Contractor Est. ($ Millions): $2,864.6 million
2026 Estimated Industrial Sales: $653.7 million
POPULATION GROWTH
2025 Population Estimate: 7,904,627
2020-2025 Population # Change: 735,343
2020-2025 Population % Change: 10.3%
New Residents per day: 217
BUILDING PERMITS
June 2026 - Single-family (SF) permits: 24,228 permits
# Change SF YOY: (1,493) permits
% Change SF YOY: -5.8%
June 2026 -Multi-family (MF) permits: 3,985 permits
# Change MF YOY: (3,869) permits
% Change MF YOY: -49.3%
Electrical Wholesaling's Top 10 Local Markets to Watch gives you a taste of the mountain of electrical market sales estimates and other local market data available at Electrical Marketing newsletter for just $99 per year. This data includes:
- Local market sales estimates, building permits and population data for more than 300 other Metropolitan Statistical areas
- The Electrical Price Index (EPI) - A monthly compilation of pricing trends for more than 20 key electrical product groups
- Annual product sales estimates from 16 key electrical products
Sources of market data: Local market data collected by Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA) and county. Sales estimates developed with sales-per-employee multipliers from Electrical Wholesaling’s Market Planning Guide ($83572 per electrical contractor employee and $2,7289 per industrial employee) and employment data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Building permit and population data downloaded from U.S. Census Bureau website.
About the Author
Jim Lucy
Editor-in-Chief
Over the past 40-plus years, hundreds of Jim’s articles have been published in Electrical Wholesaling and Electrical Marketing newsletter on topics such as the impact of new competitors on the electrical market’s channels of distribution, energy-efficient lighting and renewables, and local market economics. In addition to his published work, Jim regularly gives presentations on these topics to C-suite executives, industry groups and investment analysts.
He recently launched a new subscription-based data product for Electrical Marketing that offers electrical sales potential estimates and related market data for more than 300 metropolitan areas, and in 1999 he published his first book, “The Electrical Marketer’s Survival Guide” for electrical industry executives looking for an overview of key market trends.
While managing Electrical Wholesaling’s editorial operations, Jim and the publication’s staff won several Jesse H. Neal awards for editorial excellence, the highest honor in the business press, and numerous national and regional awards from the American Society of Business Press Editors. He has a master’s degree in Communications and a bachelor’s degree in Journalism from Glassboro State College, Glassboro, N.J. (now Rowan University).