"Daily barrage of terrestrial bombardment." That is how attorneys described SpaceX's rocket engine tests in a lawsuit filed against the company in McLennan County's 414th District Court. It is also, whether anyone intended it this way or not, a decent description of what has been driving McGregor home values for the better part of two decades.
Six weeks after that lawsuit landed, SpaceX rang the opening bell on Nasdaq at a valuation near $1.7 trillion, according to CoStar's coverage of the listing. Two events, same company, same rocket-testing complex on the edge of town, and both of them tell you something about McGregor real estate that a median list price never will. One explains why prices here have climbed faster than almost anywhere else in the state. The other explains why a handful of addresses near that complex now carry a due-diligence question buyers in Hewitt or Woodway simply don't have to ask.
A Growth Rate the State Average Can't Explain
McGregor's affordability compared to Waco or Woodway is the part of the story every portal already tells you. What the portals don't tell you is why the growth curve underneath that affordability looks so different from a typical small Texas town.
Texas Real Estate Research Center data comparing McLennan County to the statewide market show why McGregor doesn't behave like a normal bedroom community. Between 2014 and 2025, home prices statewide rose 84 percent. In McLennan County, they rose 117 percent over the same stretch, a gap that tracks almost exactly with the growth of SpaceX's Rocket Development and Test Facility on the county's edge.
| 2014 to 2025 price growth | |
|---|---|
| Texas statewide | 84% |
| McLennan County | 117% |
That gap isn't ordinary suburban spillover from Waco. It's the footprint of a single employer. In a 2024 report, McGregor Economic Development Corporation executive director Andrew Smith said SpaceX had spent roughly $1.5 billion with Texas-based suppliers in the two prior years alone, on top of local payroll. Household income in McLennan County rose 57 percent from 2014 to 2024, outpacing the state average over the same period. Population growth here actually lagged the state. The money didn't come from more people moving in. It came from the same people earning more.
That distinction matters for anyone comparing McGregor's number to a neighboring town's. A Hewitt or Woodway price climb usually tracks rooftops and commute times. McGregor's tracks a single facility's payroll and supplier contracts. When that facility's fortunes change, the local market feels it faster and harder than a town with a more diversified economic base would.
Then the IPO Landed
SpaceX's rocket engine complex, about 100 miles north of Austin according to CoStar's reporting, sits on roughly 4,000 acres the company leases from the city of McGregor and runs at least 15 specialized test stands for Merlin and Raptor engines. The complex has operated there since 2003, and McGregor recently renewed its lease with the company under terms that include stricter noise ordinances and additional city revenue.
On June 12, 2026, that same company listed on Nasdaq at a valuation CoStar put near $1.7 trillion, the largest IPO on record. Texas A&M Real Estate Research Center economist Yanling Mayer flagged the local consequence of an event like this well before it happened: a sudden positive income effect, converting years of paper equity into cash a workforce concentrated in one county can spend on housing right now.
For a McGregor buyer, that means the tailwind behind the last decade of price growth just got a fresh push. It also means that a town this small, with an employer this concentrated, can move on news that has nothing to do with local inventory or interest rates. Watching McLennan County's market right now means watching one company's stock ticker almost as much as watching new listings.
Six Weeks Earlier, in the Same County Courthouse
On April 30, 2026, nearly 80 residents of McGregor, Moody, Crawford, and Oglesby filed suit against SpaceX in that same 414th District Court, seeking more than $1 million in damages. The filing describes the company's static-fire testing, engines bolted to the ground and ignited without liftoff, as generating acoustic and seismic forces intense enough to crack foundations, shift homes off level, and shatter windows and doors, according to KWTX's reporting on the case.
"The continuous shaking and acoustic resonance have caused severe, escalating property damage across these communities."
That line comes directly from the petition. The suit alleges some Raptor 3 engine tests exceed 600,000 pounds of thrust and that testing now occurs nearly every day, sometimes multiple times, with some weeks seeing more than 20 separate burns.
None of this means every home in McGregor carries structural risk. The plaintiffs are a specific group of homeowners in specific communities near the test site, not a townwide class. But it does mean that proximity to that facility, something a median price treats as invisible, is now a documented variable in how some McGregor and Crawford homes have fared physically over the past several years.
This Isn't the First Time
The April 2026 case wasn't the first of its kind. In April 2024, a China Spring homeowner named Edward Leslie filed suit in Waco's 170th State District Court, seeking $250,000 to $1 million after he said a February 2023 test firing shifted his home's foundation, cracking walls, ceilings, and floors and leaving interior doors unable to stay open. County appraisal records showed Leslie had bought the home in May 2021, more than 13 years after SpaceX's first Falcon 9 test firing at the facility.
At the time, McGregor's city manager said the city had fielded a few complaints about testing but that the Leslie case appeared to be the first lawsuit filed over it in a McLennan County state court. Two years later, that first case has become dozens.
The pattern across both filings is consistent. Homes located within a certain radius of the McGregor complex, whose address is listed simply as 1 Rocket Road, have experienced repair claims tied to testing vibrations that predate this year's lawsuit by at least two years. That's a longer track record than a single news cycle, and it's the kind of pattern a buyer evaluating a specific address should be aware of before making an offer near that part of the county.
What a Buyer Actually Does With This
Texas disclosure practice already covers ground adjacent to this situation. Texas Real Estate Research Center guidance for agents lists pending legal actions affecting a property and proximity to nuisances among the categories that should surface during a transaction. Nothing about a rocket testing facility six or eight miles away is exotic once you frame it that way. It's the same category of question a buyer would ask about a property near an airport flight path or a rail line, just with a more dramatic set of facts behind it.
For a buyer looking seriously at a McGregor or Crawford address, a few questions are worth raising directly with a local agent before writing an offer:
- How far is this specific address from the SpaceX test complex, and has that distance changed how the property has been maintained or repaired over time?
- Has the current or a previous owner filed an insurance claim or repair request related to foundation, wall, or window damage?
- Does the inspection report flag foundation movement, door and window alignment issues, or fresh patching that might mask older cracking?
- Is the property, or a nearby property the seller is aware of, named in either the April 2026 state lawsuit or any related litigation?
None of these questions should scare a buyer away from McGregor. They're the same category of homework a buyer should do near any concentrated industrial operation, and they apply to a specific set of addresses, not the whole town. What they should do is replace a vague sense of "is McGregor a good buy" with a specific answer for the specific house being considered.
A Few Questions Worth Settling Early
Does this affect every home in McGregor? No. The lawsuits name specific plaintiffs in specific communities near the test facility. A home several miles away in a different part of town faces a different set of considerations entirely.
Will the lawsuit change McGregor's price trajectory? That's not something any current data source can answer. The IPO's income effect and the litigation are both live and unresolved at the same time, which is exactly why a buyer should ask about a specific address rather than lean on a townwide average.
Is this new information, or has it been building for a while? It's been building since at least 2024, when the first structural-damage suit over this issue was filed. The scale changed dramatically this year, but the underlying pattern is not new.
McGregor's price growth is real, and the reasons behind it are unusually well documented for a town this size. So is the friction sitting under a specific slice of that same map. A number on a listing page won't tell you which side of that story a particular house is on. A conversation with someone who follows this market closely will.
If you're weighing a specific McGregor address, or comparing it against Hewitt, Woodway, or Waco, Brook Ashley Dowd can walk through what a given property's location actually means before you write an offer. Let's Connect.
