What "Verified" Actually Means: Inside 77008's Comparable Sales

What "Verified" Actually Means: Inside 77008's Comparable Sales

DirtIQ Journal — October 16, 2026

Texas is a non-disclosure state. When a house sells, the price doesn't land in a public deed record the way it does in most of the country. So when a builder asks the only question that matters — what are homes on this street actually selling for? — the honest answer has to be assembled, record by record, from source listings. And it has to be checked.

That's the job of DirtIQ's comparable-sales registry. This post opens it up: what "verified" means here, what the numbers for one Houston ZIP — 77008, the Heights — look like today, and exactly where the gaps still are. Everything below was counted live from the registry on October 16, 2026, and updated October 21, 2026 after the candidate queue was source-checked and applied.

What "verified" means

Every comparable record in the registry carries one of three statuses:

• Candidate — the record has been collected but not yet checked against its source.
• Verified — a reviewer has confirmed the record against its source: the sale price, sale date, living area, and price-per-square-foot math are complete and internally consistent, and the figure isn't an outlier against the ZIP's verified median.
• Rejected — the record failed that check and stays out of every public number.

Today the registry holds 887 records: 837 Verified, 21 Candidate, 29 Rejected.

But records are not sales. Each comparable in the registry is attached to the subject lots it helps price, so the same closed sale appears once for every lot it informs. One Meyerland sale — Glenmeadow Drive — sits behind 64 records. Counting rows would count that single sale 64 times.

So the headline figure is keyed the strict way: by address, sale price, and sale date, with address formatting normalized so the same property spelled two ways still counts once. Keyed that way, the 837 verified records resolve to 104 distinct verified comparable sales at 103 distinct addresses. Only those 104 are ever published as "verified comparable sales," and the count is computed from the registry — never typed in by hand.

Two more rules keep the figure honest. Verified records keep their source link on the record itself — 823 of the 837 carry one, and the largest single source is HAR.com (606 of 837 records); the 14 without a link on the row are additional lot linkages of sales whose source sits on the sale's primary record. And a sale only enters the 104 when its record clears the check above; the queue behind it is published too, gaps and all, in the last section of this post.

77008, right now

The Heights is one of five ZIPs where DirtIQ coverage is live today. Its verified file holds 149 records — and, keyed by address, price, and date, those records resolve to 31 distinct sales. Counted over those 31 sales, as of October 21, 2026:

• Median sale price: $755,642 (30 of the 31 sales carry a price; the range runs $484,990 to $1,799,900)
• Median price per square foot: $282
• Median living area: 2,601 SF (range 1,883 to 4,241 SF), with build years from 2023 to 2026 — these are new-build comparables, not the historic housing stock
• Sale dates on record run from February 7, 2025 to September 18, 2026

One honesty note on method: if you average over the 149 records instead of the 31 sales, the median price comes out higher — $840,000 — because a handful of high-value sales repeat across many subject lots and get counted again and again. The distinct-sales figure is the conservative one, so it's the one we publish. That median is the number a builder should anchor on — not the average of what's currently listed. Asking prices describe hope; these 31 sales describe closed deals, each one traceable to its source.

The honest gaps

A registry that hides its gaps isn't evidence, so here they are. In 77008, 23 of the 31 distinct sales carry a lot size (83 of the 149 records do) — living area is complete, lot size is not, and the public figures say so rather than papering over it. Registry-wide the coverage is better than it was — county-record fills in the October 20 pass took it to 84 of the 104 distinct verified sales — but it is still not complete, and the public figures say so rather than papering over it.

Coverage is also deliberately narrow, for now. DirtIQ's territory table tracks 1,935 Texas ZIPs; five are Live today — 77005, 77008, 77025, 77096, and 77401 — and the other 1,930 are Planned. Depth, counted in distinct sales, is uneven: 77401 holds 34 of the 104, followed by 77008 (31) and 77025 (18), while 77096's 245 records resolve to just 8 distinct sales so far. Verified depth is real where it exists, and thin where it doesn't — the registry says both.

What's next: the candidate queue

The queue has already been worked once, in the open. On October 20, 2026 the candidate file was source-checked record by record and the results applied: 38 records covering 20 distinct sales were promoted to Verified — 16 sales new to the verified set, 4 new linkages of sales already verified for other lots — taking distinct verified sales from 88 to 104. In the same pass, 192 missing or conflicting field values were filled from county records. A record becomes "verified" when the evidence does, not before.

What remains is 21 Candidate records covering 8 distinct sales, and every one of them is a named conflict between sources — a lot size two sources state differently, a price only one source carries — not an unchecked record. Four of the 21 are blocked on a missing sale price. They stay Candidates until the conflicts resolve from a source; in a non-disclosure state, a missing price resolves only from a source — never from an estimate.

Evidence before estimates

DirtIQ's rule for itself is the same one it sells: no number without a source, no source without a date, and no gap dressed up as a figure. If you're pricing a lot in 77008 today, the starting point isn't a listing portal's asking prices — it's 31 closed, checked, source-linked sales with a median of $755,642 and $282 a square foot.

Open the ZIP in Explore and read them yourself: dirtiq.tech

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Methodology & sources: All figures computed live from DirtIQ's New Build Comparables registry on October 16, 2026 and updated October 21, 2026 (887 records by Status: 837 Verified / 21 Candidate / 29 Rejected). "Verified comparable sales" = distinct sales keyed by address + sale price + sale date, address formatting normalized: 837 verified records = 104 distinct sales at 103 distinct addresses. ZIP statistics are computed over distinct sales unless labeled as record counts. Territory counts: DirtIQ ZIP Territories table, October 16, 2026 (1,935 ZIPs; Coverage Status: 5 Live, 1,930 Planned). Candidate queue: source-checked and applied October 20, 2026 (38 promotions, 192 field fills); remaining queue counted October 21, 2026. Record sources include HAR.com and Houston-area listing publishers; every verified record retains its source URL in the registry.