New jobs and better access to credit for homebuyers helped lift Houston's housing market during the first quarter.

Areawide, homes sales jumped 9 percent over the same period last year, to 12,936, according to a quarterly housing report from the Texas Association of Realtors. The median price reached $150,900, an increase of 4 percent.

Economist Jim Gaines suspects part of the improvement is lenders' trying to make it a little easier for those who want to own homes.

"I don't want to imply it's getting easy, but I am being told by Realtors I'm talking to around the state that they are sensing the lenders are easing up just a bit," said Gaines of the Real Estate Center at Texas A&M University, which analyzes the statewide reports.

Some attribute the stronger housing to consumers' being better prepared for more scrutiny from lenders.

"The consumer is now adjusting to fact that you have to be very credit-worthy today to get financing," said David Zugheri, executive vice president and co-founder Envoy Mortgage.

Underwriting guidelines for conventional mortgages - those that meet the purchase criteria of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac - have not eased, said Ed Kampf, branch partner at Hancock Mortgage Partners in Houston.

"The lenders are still underwriting defensively," Kampf said.

Those who don't have strong enough credit to qualify for a mortgage are seeking help from financial-repair companies and returning to the market when their positions improve.

The strengthening economy also is helping some who have been shut out of the mortgage market.

In some cases, self-employed borrowers whose businesses suffered during the recession are seeing their incomes rise again, allowing them to qualify for home loans.

"I'm more optimistic about what we're seeing," said Kevin Keith, a mortgage-banking officer for BBVA Compass.

According to the housing report, consumers' overall attitudes toward real estate are improving.

"Buyers and sellers have higher expectations for the market, so they're beginning to take action and we're starting to see the impacts," Gaines said.

There are more tangible signs.

The inventory of homes for sale fell during the first quarter, dipping to 6 months compared with 7.6 months a year earlier, a possible indication of coming price increases. Months inventory is the time it would take to sell all the homes on the market based on the previous year of sales activity. The Real Estate Center cites 6.5 months of inventory as a balanced market.

Inventory has been falling for about six months due in part to homeowners' waiting for prices to improve before putting their homes on the market, Gaines said. The slower processing of foreclosures and fewer distressed properties also may reduce the number of listings.

The Houston metro area officially topped 6 million people last summer, surpassing Philadelphia to become the nation's fifth-largest metropolitan area.

The growth is part of a continued Texas juggernaut led by Harris County, which added more people than any county in the nation between April 1, 2010, and July 2011, according to census estimates released on Thursday.

The estimates are an update to the official 2010 Census. One thing is clear: Texas remains a powerful draw.

"People are voting with their feet," said Jeff Moseley, president and CEO of the Greater Houston Partnership. "It's a huge validation."

Four of the 10 counties posting the largest numeric gains between 2010 and 2011 were in Texas: Harris, Dallas, Bexar and Tarrant.

Texas' population grew from 25.1 million in 2010 to an estimated 25.7 million in mid-2011.

Gov. Rick Perry's office claimed at least some of the credit.

"Governor Perry has worked hard to make Texas the best state in the nation to live, work and raise a family by creating an economic environment that encourages job creation and innovation," said spokeswoman Steffany Duke. "The governor's commitment to low taxes, predictable regulations, a fair legal system and developing a skilled workforce have made Texas the nation's leading job-creating state."

Houston tally unofficial

Only the Dallas- Fort Worth-Arlington metropolitan area added more people than the Houston-Sugar Land-Baytown metro area - 154,774 people compared with 139,699.

Still, that was enough to push the area's population to 6.08 million, behind only New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and Dallas-Fort Worth.

Houston Mayor Annise Parker said the census numbers confirm what she had seen elsewhere in terms of employment growth.

"Houston is the job capital of the nation. Professional opportunities and our low cost of living are luring people here from other cities," she said by email. "Our new residents are quickly finding out what the rest of us already knew, Houston is the best city in America in which to live, work and raise a family."

Thursday's population estimates didn't include figures for the city of Houston. The city, fourth-largest in the U.S., has filed a challenge to its official count in the 2010 Census, saying the 2,099,451 figure was more than 100,000 below earlier estimates. That challenge is still under review, and census officials have asked for additional maps and documentation, Margaret Wallace, an assistant director in the city planning department, said Wednesday.

'It is a good thing'

Much of the population growth since 2010, both in Texas and elsewhere in the nation - including several cities in North Dakota - can be explained by a burst of oil and gas exploration, said Steve Murdock, director of Rice University's Hobby Center for the Study of Texas.

He said population growth can be a "double-edged sword," bringing prosperity but also demands for costly services including education and transportation.

Still, few people were lamenting the news.

"Most people that I know think it is a good thing," Harris County Judge Ed Emmett said of the rapid growth. "Clearly we have an economy that's growing.

"I would rather be in a county that has the problem of meeting the needs of growth than the problem of meeting the needs of stagnation."

Notions of jurisdiction

Harris County gained more than 88,000 residents between 2010 and mid-2011, growing to 4.18 million, and Emmett noted that if unincorporated Harris County were itself a city, it would be the fifth largest city in the United States.

The Houston metropolitan area's explosive growth offers evidence of something the county judge often talks about - old notions of jurisdiction don't make as much sense as they once did.

"Most things don't stop at a county line," Emmett said. "Traffic doesn't stop at a county line. Pollution doesn't stop at a county line."

Lloyd Potter, director of the Texas State Data Center, said the state's growth rate between 2010 and 2011 puts it on a pace to repeat the 21 percent growth between 2000 and 2010.

And although growth can bring problems, he agreed with Emmett that it's better than the opposite.

"Growth is certainly an indicator of economic growth," Potter declared. "Most people have a hard time looking at economic growth and thinking that's bad."