Retail is what I did for fifteen years before I did anything else on this corridor, and it is the part of this market that outside capital gets wrong most often — usually in the same direction, and usually because the demographic profile it pulled describes a town of twenty-nine thousand poor people and stops there.
That profile is accurate and it is not the market. The market is a town of twenty-nine thousand that rings up $388.6 million of taxable retail sales a year and sits across a bridge from a quarter of a million more people. Both facts are true at once, and the gap between them is the entire opportunity — and the entire risk.
This page is the arithmetic, with every number sourced and every denominator named. Where a figure flatters the market I have said so, and where the honest version is less exciting I have used the honest version.
The size of the market
The Texas Comptroller publishes taxable sales for every Texas city, quarterly, free. For the City of Eagle Pass, calendar 2025:
| Category | Taxable sales | Outlets |
|---|---|---|
| Retail trade | $388,603,073 | 529 |
| Accommodation and food services | $119,344,039 | 251 |
| All other sectors combined | $52,066,566 | — |
| All industries | $560,013,678 | 1,285 |
Retail and food service are more than ninety percent of the taxable base. Manufacturing is $4.96 million. Mining and oil and gas is zero. This is a retail economy with almost no industrial or business-to-business taxable base underneath it — which is worth knowing before you underwrite either one.
Source: Texas Comptroller, Quarterly Sales Tax Historical Data, dataset 7z4d-yf2c, calendar year 2025 (four quarters), city of Eagle Pass.
The market stopped growing two years ago
This is the finding that matters most and the one least often led with locally.
| Year | City taxable sales, change |
|---|---|
| 2021 | +25.9% |
| 2022 | +14.0% |
| 2023 | +7.9% |
| 2024 | +3.7% |
| 2025 | −0.5% |
Retail trade specifically fell from $400,358,260 in 2024 to $388,603,073 in 2025 — down 2.9%. These are nominal dollars. Against ordinary consumer inflation, a flat nominal year is a real decline of roughly three percent.
One number moves the other way, and the difference is instructive. The City's own 1% sales tax allocation payments rose 45.2% between 2019 and 2025, from $5,336,331 to $7,748,103, and set a record in 2025. Those payments imply materially more taxable sales than the outlet-level report shows, and the gap has widened since 2019. The most likely explanation is destination-sourced e-commerce and remote-seller tax flowing to Eagle Pass addresses — revenue to the City, but not sales through a store here.
If you are underwriting a building, the outlet figure is your number. If you are underwriting municipal revenue, the allocation figure is. They are not interchangeable, and using the friendlier one is how a pro forma gets built on the wrong base.
Sources: Texas Comptroller, Quarterly Sales Tax Historical Data (7z4d-yf2c); Sales Tax Allocation – City (vfba-b57j), 163 monthly rows through July 2026.
The pull factor — and the version of it that is honest
Every promotional deck about a border town leads with a retail pull factor. Here is the calculation done properly, with both denominators shown, because only one of them is defensible.
| Basis, calendar 2025 | Retail sales per capita | vs Texas ($7,073) |
|---|---|---|
| City of Eagle Pass (28,926 residents) | $13,434 | 1.90× |
| Maverick County (58,823 residents) | $6,995 | 0.99× |
The 1.90 is largely an artifact of geography. Eagle Pass city holds 94.4% of the county's retail sales but only 49% of its population, so a city-level ratio counts county residents who live outside the city limits as imported demand. At the county level — the honest minimum trade area — this market rings up essentially exactly the Texas average per resident.
Never publish the 1.90 without the 0.99 beside it. We won't.
The defensible version of the story is an income adjustment. Maverick County produces Texas-average retail sales per capita on roughly half of Texas-average per-capita income — $21,211 against $40,752. That implies about 1.9× more retail volume than local buying power supports. That gap is real, and it is imported demand of some kind.
But it does not prove where the imported demand comes from. Cross-border shoppers, commuters, tourists, pass-through traffic and business purchases are all inside that number and this dataset cannot separate them. The caution is in the peer set: on the same income-adjusted basis, Uvalde County scores 1.74 and it is not a border market. Webb County (Laredo) is 1.71, Kerr 1.68, Val Verde (Del Rio) 1.29.
Sources: Texas Comptroller (7z4d-yf2c); U.S. Census Bureau Population Estimates Vintage 2025; ACS 2020–2024 5-Year, table DP03. Ratios are our arithmetic on those published figures, not a published statistic.
Against a comparable town
The fairest size comparable in Texas is Corsicana — 25,487 residents, county seat of a 57,181-person county, not on a border.
| City | Retail sales per capita, 2025 | Pull factor |
|---|---|---|
| Kerrville | $22,749 | 3.22 |
| Eagle Pass | $13,434 | 1.90 |
| Corsicana | $12,569 | 1.78 |
| Uvalde | $11,516 | 1.63 |
| Nacogdoches | $11,508 | 1.63 |
| Del Rio | $8,704 | 1.23 |
| Laredo | $7,661 | 1.08 |
Eagle Pass's retail capture is real. It is not exceptional. A non-border county seat of almost identical size captures nearly as much, and a Hill Country town beats it decisively — on double the per-capita income.
The interesting line in that table is Laredo. It has 2,065 million dollars of retail sales and a pull factor of 1.08. Scale and capture are different things, and confusing them is how a retailer justifies the wrong store.
The trade area, both sides
On the U.S. side there is almost nobody. The four closest counties — Maverick, Zavala, Dimmit and Kinney — hold 79,012 people in total. Zavala's residents ring up $2,184 of retail per capita and Kinney's $1,632, which means those residents are already shopping somewhere else.
| From Eagle Pass | Distance | Drive | Retail sales, 2025 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Carrizo Springs | 43 mi | 50 min | — |
| Del Rio | 55 mi | 1h 07 | $300.3M |
| Uvalde | 66 mi | 1h 17 | $178.0M |
| Laredo | 124 mi | 2h 17 | $2,064.9M |
| San Antonio | 143 mi | 2h 39 | $13,081.7M |
Nothing larger than Eagle Pass exists within 120 miles. Del Rio at 55 miles is a smaller market. That is a genuine competitive moat for convenience and value retail — and it is also why comparison-goods spending leaks to San Antonio, which is outside a normal weekly trip but well inside a monthly one.
On the Mexican side there are 272,643 people across the nine adjacent Coahuila municipios — Piedras Negras 176,327, Nava 33,129, Allende 23,056, and six smaller. Piedras Negras grew 15.4% between 2010 and 2020. That is roughly 3.5× the U.S. population within a comparable drive.
Two cautions on that number, both important. It is the 2020 INEGI census, the most recent full count, so it understates 2026 by an unknown amount. And population is not purchasing power — we could not source household income or retail spending for Piedras Negras from any free source, and we are not going to estimate it.
Sources: Texas Comptroller (7z4d-yf2c); Census PEP Vintage 2025; INEGI Censo de Población y Vivienda 2020, ITER Coahuila. Drive times computed via public routing between place centroids.
Who lives here, and what they earn
The retail-relevant denominator is households, not people.
| Households | Median household income | |
|---|---|---|
| Maverick County | 18,080 | $49,568 |
| City of Eagle Pass | 9,140 | $57,207 |
County retail taxable sales of $411.5 million equal roughly 35% of aggregate county household income. The comparable statewide ratio is about 22%. That is the same imported-demand signal as the income-adjusted pull factor, arrived at a different way — which is the only reason it is worth stating.
Maverick County is a slow-growth market, not a growth market. Population grew 6.7% between 2010 and 2020 and has added roughly a thousand people since. Unemployment runs about double the Texas rate and has been getting worse, not better, since 2023.
Sources: ACS 2020–2024 5-Year, tables DP02 and DP03; Census PEP Vintage 2025; BLS. The 35% figure mixes a 2020–2024 income average with 2025 sales and is an order-of-magnitude indicator only.
Which categories are over-served and which are not
Employment location quotients measure how concentrated a category is here against the national average. Above 1.0 is over-represented; below 1.0 is under-represented.
| Category | LQ | Establishments | Employees |
|---|---|---|---|
| Gasoline stations | 2.15 | 22 | 274 |
| General merchandise | 2.09 | 29 | 824 |
| Building material and garden | 1.45 | 13 | 242 |
| Food and beverage retailers | 1.27 | 10 | 501 |
| Accommodation and food services | 1.09 | 71 | 1,617 |
| Motor vehicle and parts | 1.03 | 29 | 256 |
| Clothing, accessories, shoes | 0.88 | 14 | 122 |
| Sporting goods, hobby, book | 0.49 | 12 | 88 |
| Health and personal care | 0.49 | 9 | 63 |
Read the bottom two lines carefully before treating them as unserved demand. A low location quotient can mean the category is missing. It can equally mean it is being served across the river, or online. On this corridor both are live explanations and the data cannot distinguish them. That question is answered by fieldwork, not by a spreadsheet.
Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages, area 48323, CY2025 annual averages. NAICS was revised in 2022, so pre-2022 retail subsector codes are not directly comparable.
Common questions
How big is the Eagle Pass retail market?
City of Eagle Pass retail trade taxable sales were $388,603,073 in calendar 2025 across 529 outlets, with a further $119,344,039 in accommodation and food services. All industries totalled $560,013,678. Source: Texas Comptroller, Quarterly Sales Tax Historical Data.
Is Eagle Pass retail growing?
No. City taxable sales fell 0.5% in 2025 after growth of 25.9%, 14.0%, 7.9% and 3.7% in the four prior years. Retail trade specifically fell 2.9%. In nominal dollars that is a real decline of roughly three percent.
What is the Eagle Pass retail pull factor?
At city level, 1.90 times the Texas average per resident. At county level — the honest minimum trade area — 0.99, essentially exactly the Texas average. The city figure is inflated because Eagle Pass holds 94% of county retail sales but only 49% of county population. The defensible statement is income-adjusted: the county produces Texas-average retail sales on roughly half of Texas-average income.
How large is the Eagle Pass trade area?
On the U.S. side, about 79,000 people across the four nearest counties, with nothing larger than Eagle Pass within 120 miles. On the Mexican side, about 272,600 people across the nine adjacent Coahuila municipios, of which Piedras Negras is 176,327 (2020 census). Population is not purchasing power, and no free source publishes Piedras Negras household income.
What retail categories are underserved in Eagle Pass?
By employment concentration, health and personal care and sporting goods/hobby/books both run at roughly half the national average. A low concentration can mean unserved demand or it can mean the category is being served across the river or online — that distinction requires fieldwork, not data.
Sources. Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts, Quarterly Sales Tax Historical Data (7z4d-yf2c) and Sales Tax Allocation – City (vfba-b57j); U.S. Census Bureau Population Estimates Vintage 2025 and ACS 2020–2024 5-Year; U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics QCEW area 48323; INEGI Censo de Población y Vivienda 2020. Verified as of August 2026; project statuses change and every figure should be re-verified before it is relied upon.