Shared analysis

Houston MF value-add screen: Conroe-West, Kingwood, and the Galveston-County suburbs clear on demand and locked-out supply — the Fort Bend corridor (Sugar Land, Cinco Ranch, Missouri City) is where headroom and accelerating competing supply collide worst.

Rank	Tier	Composite Score	Migration Pctile (MSA)	Cohort Income-Delta Pctile (MSA)	Rent Tradeout Pctile	Loss-to-Lease Spread	Permit-Risk Read
Strong
1	Strong	77.2	95	79	18	+14.9%	Montgomery -56% (Decelerating)
2	Strong	69.0	68	80	92	+6.7%	Harris -6% (Decelerating)
3	Strong	68.6	79	67	82	-1.4%	Galveston -60% (Decelerating)
4	Strong	68.5	80	44	97	+6.6%	Galveston -60% (Decelerating)
5	Strong	67.9	59	85	39	+11.9%	Harris -6% (Decelerating)
6	Strong	65.7	58	73	76	+2.0%	Brazoria -99% (Decelerating)
Mixed
7	Mixed	59.3	82	0	87	+5.7%	Harris/Fort Bend -6% (Decelerating)
8	Mixed	58.7	100	2	55	+13.0%	Harris -6% (Decelerating)
9	Mixed	55.7	76	61	34	+7.9%	Montgomery -56% (Decelerating)
10	Mixed	53.7	77	6	50	+12.1%	Harris -6% (Decelerating)
11	Mixed	46.3	70	58	8	+2.9%	Harris -6% (Decelerating)
Weak
12	Weak	39.2	11	32	45	+3.3%	Harris -6% (Decelerating)
13	Weak	37.7	20	77	66	-1.5%	Harris -6% (Decelerating)
14	Weak	32.9	3	5	71	+4.6%	Harris -6% (Decelerating)
15	Weak	32.3	47	15	3	+6.3%	Harris -6% (Decelerating)
16	Weak	31.9	35	30	24	-2.6%	Fort Bend +44% (Accelerating)
17	Weak	27.8	45	14	13	+1.6%	Fort Bend +44% (Accelerating)
18	Weak	25.3	39	18	61	-7.1%	Fort Bend +44% (Accelerating)
19	Weak	19.9	12	23	29	-0.1%	Fort Bend +44% (Accelerating)

Verdict. Conroe-West, Kingwood, League City/Dickenson, Galveston, Spring, and Pearland/Friendswood clear the screen — each pairs real migration and cohort quality with a competing-supply pipeline that's shrinking, not building. Run deeper diligence on Conroe-West first: it has the largest mark-to-market spread in the pool (+14.9% asking-over-in-place) but occupancy fell 5.8 points over the trailing year, so the entry question is whether that softness is a recent-supply digestion issue that clears before your hold period, or something structural.

What stands out

Fort Bend is the textbook case the concern is about: Sugar Land, Cinco Ranch, and Missouri City show weak-to-negative migration, out-migrants earning more than in-migrants (cohort downgrade), and the county's multifamily permit pipeline just accelerated 44% year-over-year — loss-to-lease is thin-to-negative there already, so there's little headroom to defend against the wave.
Northwest Harris County posted the single strongest in-migration in the pool (net +9.0% of population) , but its inbound cohort earns a median $55K less than its outbound cohort — that's volume without upgrade, a flag for durable rent growth even though the raw growth number looks great.
Montgomery and Galveston counties both show multifamily permits down more than 55% versus the prior 12 months , which is the direct tailwind behind Conroe-West's, The Woodlands', League City's, and Galveston's supply-risk scores.

Strategy fit

Conroe-West / Spring — best value-add math (largest asking-vs-in-place spreads) sitting on a decelerating Montgomery/north-Harris permit pipeline, but both show sharp occupancy declines this year worth underwriting through before assuming the spread converts to NOI.
Kingwood / Pearland-Friendswood / League City — cleaner, lower-drama nodes: positive tradeouts, cohort upgrading, near-zero competing multifamily permitting in Galveston and Brazoria counties , but thinner mark-to-market headroom (2–7%), better fits for light-touch value-add than a deep reposition.
Fort Bend cluster (Sugar Land north/south, Cinco Ranch, Missouri City) — pass for now; the supply-risk-erodes-headroom scenario is already showing up in the data, not a hypothetical.
The Heights — Houston's most affluent submarket by household income is nonetheless losing residents net and downgrading cohort quality (inbound migrants earn $45K less than outbound) ; worth a second look at what's driving the outmigration before treating rent levels there as durable.

Risks

Fort Bend's permit acceleration is county-level, not submarket-level (submarket-grain permit data isn't published) — if a specific asset sits in a pocket of that county away from the active pipeline, this screen overstates its risk; verify with a site-specific supply pull before passing on a Fort Bend deal outright.
Conroe-West and Spring's occupancy drops (-5.8 and -13.8 points year-over-year) could reflect either a temporary post-delivery lease-up trough (the read the composite implies) or renter-quality erosion the ACS-sourced job growth figures — which resolve at a coarser sub-MSA grain for most of these nodes rather than the true submarket boundary — aren't sharp enough to rule out.

Weights and data basis: the six criteria you named (migration, cohort income delta, employment/job growth, rent trajectory, asking-vs-in-place spread, permit intensity) were weighted equally at 1/6 each — you didn't specify a split, so this is the disclosed default. Permit intensity is measured at the county level (Harris, Fort Bend, Montgomery, Galveston, Brazoria) as a proxy, since building-permit data isn't published at the submarket grain ; Harris's -6% and Galveston/Brazoria's -60%/-99% deceleration also rest on very different absolute bases (11,800 vs. 2-5 units), so read those percentages as direction, not comparable magnitude. Houston MSA multifamily cap rates have held near 5.49%, down modestly from 5.60% a year ago, against MSA-wide vacancy of 12.5% and a pipeline of 11,362 units under construction against 5,848 net absorption — the metro is still digesting recent deliveries even as the trailing-12-month permit count metro-wide has eased 11% . Happy to go deeper on any single submarket's rent-roll-level mark-to-market math or size a specific deal against these reads.