Houston Land Development Outlook 2026: A Vision for Regulatory Reliability
This is Dwayne Culp, Ph.D. and Technical Director of Tetra Land Services, writing to our valued clients, partners, and the greater Houston development community we are proud to serve. My 2025 Christmas wish is for RELAIBILTY. I want a regulatory landscape that is steady, transparent, and predictable. We all work better if we can confidently anticipate how rules will be applied. Predictability enables accurate planning, budgeting, and on-time delivery. Above all, strong, professional relationships with reviewing agencies remain the foundation of that certainty. When regulators and the regulated respect one another, everyone benefits, most especially the citizens of Greater Houston who gain homes, jobs, and infrastructure.
I also hope 2026 brings stability inside those agencies. The revolving door of experienced reviewers and plan-checkers has stretched timelines and increased costs in recent years. When institutional knowledge departs, projects suffer. My sincere desire is for improved retention, training, and morale that keep seasoned professionals in place so we can all advance work efficiently and confidently.
Even amid these challenges, year-end is a time to count blessings. Everything we have, our talented team, loyal clients, and hard-earned expertise, has been entrusted to us so we can help others grow and prosper. As 2025 closes, I’m grateful for the opportunity to reflect on what Tetra accomplished this year.
We’ve completed more than 2,000 real estate appraisals for public and private projects. Each one represented a family or business in transition and another ready to establish new roots. Those appraisals smoothed hundreds of relocations while opening doors for hundreds more to build memories and futures.
Our survey teams staked and mapped hundreds of tracts across the Gulf Coast, delivering precise boundaries and topography that directly increased property values. Higher equity means better financing and real abundance for landowners and our broader community.
In single-family development, Tetra conducted over 15 detailed drainage studies, paving the way for roughly 5,000 new homesites. That translates into steady work for more than 500 builders, tradespeople, and suppliers over the next few years, and improved housing for more than 15,000 residents once families move in.
On the commercial and industrial front, we provided civil engineering design and management for more than 60 projects, ranging in type from neighborhood retail centers to heavy industrial facilities. These developments have created or sustained over 2,500 permanent jobs and generated millions in client revenue while strengthening Houston’s economic fabric.
Whether the end result is a manufactured-home community or a traditional brick-and-mortar subdivision, Tetra consistently delivers high-quality, buildable infrastructure, drainage, paving, water, and sewer so homebuilders can focus on placing families in new homes.
I am profoundly thankful for our dedicated team that brings skill and integrity every day, and for our clients who entrust us with their visions, and for agency partners who share our goal of a better Houston. From all of us at Tetra Land Services, thank you for an extraordinary 2025 and we wish you a prosperous new year.
Dr. Culp is the most senior hydrologist at Tetra Land Services and has three decades of civil engineering experience. His Ph.D. scholarship studied the effectiveness of structural BMP for the control of storm water pollution in Harris County while performing water quality monitoring and modeling upon selected ponds for the county. Dr. Culp also co-authored the City of Houston stormwater quality management plan. He is one of Texas’s original Certified Floodplain Managers. Recently, Dr. Culp and his staff have developed a series of drainage studies for Industrial and Oil Majors along the Texas Gulf Coast. Culp is married with two children, and lives on his farm in Southwest Houston.