Living in Kerrville, TX

Kerr County

Kerrville is a genuine Texas Hill Country retiree draw -- about 28% of residents are 65 or older, a real and well-documented concentration well above the national average, anchored by Peterson Regional Medical Center (a 124-bed hospital named one of the nation's Top 20 Rural Community Hospitals, the only Texas hospital on that particular list, and Kerr County's largest employer for decades) and a low, below-national-average cost of living (a BestPlaces index of 92.3). Schreiner University adds a small liberal-arts college presence. None of that, however, is the most important fact about this market, and it is not treated as one among equals here: in the early morning hours of July 4, 2025, the Guadalupe River rose roughly 26 feet in about 45 minutes, catching residents, campers, and vacationers along the river almost entirely off guard during a holiday weekend. Texas Governor Greg Abbott confirmed 135 deaths statewide, including 116 in Kerr County alone -- by his own characterization, the deadliest flooding disaster in Texas history, exceeding Hurricane Harvey's death toll. At least 27 people died at Camp Mystic, a girls' summer camp directly on the river, an event that became a national symbol of the disaster. Investigative reporting afterward found only about 2.5% of Kerr County homeowners carried flood insurance at the time -- standard homeowners policies exclude flood coverage everywhere, and that gap, combined with the flood's near-total lack of warning time, is central to why the death toll was so severe. In direct response, Kerr County built a new flood-warning siren system (in partnership with the Upper Guadalupe River Authority); when a second, much smaller flash flood struck the same region again on July 16, 2026 -- killing one additional Kerrville-area resident but producing no missing-persons reports -- county officials credited the new sirens, which issued multiple alerts, with a materially better outcome. Recovery from the 2025 disaster is real but uneven: the Community Foundation of the Texas Hill Country raised roughly $150 million, with about $82 million distributed toward rebuilding by mid-2026, and while downtown Kerrville is reported as largely recovered, many riverfront households remain not fully whole more than a year on. Housing here continues to appreciate at an above-national pace ($373,797 median sale price, up 11.6% year over year as of mid-2026) even after the disaster, and no state income tax applies statewide in Texas as it does everywhere else in this dataset.

Explore Kerrville in depth

• Cost of Living & Housing in Kerrville
• Moving to Kerrville: Pros, Cons & What to Know

Housing

Taxes

The tradeoffs

Who this fits

Best for: Retirees and near-retirees drawn to a genuine, established Hill Country retiree community with real hospital access and a below-average cost of living, and small-town-living buyers who want that setting -- provided they weigh the flash-flood hazard below with full seriousness, particularly for any property near the Guadalupe River, Goat Creek, or other area waterways.

Maybe not for you if: Buyers who are not prepared to carry separate flood insurance, budget for it, and take flash-flood warnings seriously regardless of official flood-zone status should not consider riverside or low-lying property in this market -- the July 2025 disaster is direct, catastrophic, recent proof of the real consequences of that gap. Buyers seeking a market with no meaningful natural-hazard profile should look elsewhere in this dataset; Kerrville's flash-flood risk is real, well-documented, and recurring.