Living in Killeen, TX

Bell County

Killeen is a military town in a real, structural sense -- not a suburb that happens to be near a base, but a city whose economy, housing market, and age profile are all substantially organized around its adjacency to Fort Cavazos (renamed from Fort Hood in May 2023). Fort Cavazos is the second-largest active-duty Army post in the United States, with roughly 52,000 uniformed personnel, including more than 20,000 soldiers in the 1st Cavalry Division alone. Per the Texas Comptroller's 2023 military economic-impact analysis, the base directly employed 59,695 people (38,642 active-duty) and contributed at least $39.1 billion to the Texas economy that year, with roughly 142,000 military retirees also drawing on its facilities regionally. That single fact explains most of what's distinctive about Killeen as a place to live: a genuinely young population (median age 30.3, with just 8.4% of residents 65 or older -- well below the national average), a housing market shaped by PCS-driven turnover, and a local retail/services economy substantially built to serve the base population. Killeen is Bell County's largest city -- bigger than the county seat, Belton -- and sits inside the Killeen-Temple metro area (population 475,000+, 2022 GDP of $24.1 billion) alongside Temple, another market in this dataset. Housing here runs genuinely affordable, with a median sale price around $228,000 -- likely the most affordable of the four Central/East Texas markets in this batch, though prices softened somewhat year over year (down 9.53% in one late-2025 reading). Texas's no-state-income-tax structure applies statewide, though Killeen's combined property tax rate (roughly 1.98% across city, county, school district, and community college) and homeowners insurance costs (averaging $5,063/year, about 5% above the Texas state average) run meaningfully above the national median. On climate and hazard, Killeen sits in the same Central Texas severe-thunderstorm, hail, and tornado risk zone as Waco and Temple -- part of the broader Tornado Alley/Dixie Alley overlap -- near the southern edge of Tornado Alley itself. CrimeGrade.org rates Killeen's overall crime as roughly on par with the Texas state average but somewhat less safe than the national average, with violent crime running below both state and national safety benchmarks. This site's military/PCS-specific relocation guidance lives in a separate content layer, not in this Tier B stack -- what's captured here is the base's real, honest impact on the civilian city around it.

Explore Killeen in depth

• Moving to Killeen: Pros, Cons & What to Know
• Cost of Living in Killeen
• Housing in Killeen
• Taxes & Insurance in Killeen
• Climate in Killeen
• Schools & Families in Killeen
• Healthcare & Safety in Killeen
• Pros and Cons of Living in Killeen
• Best Areas to Live in Killeen

Housing

Taxes

The tradeoffs

Who this fits

Best for: Military families connected to Fort Cavazos, and affordability-focused buyers or renters who want genuinely low housing costs with a deep, stable local job base tied to the installation.

Maybe not for you if: Buyers or renters who want a housing market driven by conventional civilian appreciation dynamics, rather than one substantially shaped by PCS-driven rental turnover and Department of Defense budget cycles, should weigh that structural difference carefully. This Tier B stack does not cover military-specific PCS relocation logistics -- that content lives in a separate section of this site.