San Antonio Market Update 4/13/21

Hello there! Here's my latest market update for the San Antonio Real Estate Market. Watch the video on my YouTube Channel or read on to learn about all the new data!

San Antonio COVID-19 Update

As of mid-April 2021, San Antonio has continued to decrease in the number of cases and we are at low risk. That is very exciting to hear as more people are getting vaccinated!

The City of San Antonio is accepting applications for emergency rent and mortgage assistance. This is for individuals and families living within the San Antonio city limits who are experiencing hardship. Note that the landlords must be registered with the city as vendors, and will be paid directly.

For more information, register here

Additionally, the South Alamo Regional Alliance for the Homeless has put together an Eviction Prevention Toolkit to help landlords in San Antonio and Bexar County prevent tenants’ evictions.

San Antonio Real Estate Market Update

This chart compares Showings Per week from 2020 (blue line) to 2021 (red line) on homes for sale. You can see the huge decline in showings last year, due to the initial COVID lockdown precautions. This year in 2021, it has recovered greatly. The small dip you see there for 2021 was during Easter Week.

Rental showings show the same dip from Easter, but it is obviously a lot higher than it was last year. We are pretty much where we would expect to be, in terms of showings.

This chart shows Weekly Home Sales numbers in the San Antonio Market. It is important to note that this chart is just a couple of weeks behind because it takes a while for them to get the data together. So this last uptick is the last week of February.

Here are the numbers on the Median Sales Price across the whole San Antonio MLS, so that's San Antonio and outlying areas. We had a brief dip in January, but the prices have continued to increase throughout spring. Now this is anecdotal, based on my own experience, but I think this might become a trend. I have four listings right now and we have gotten so many offers, so many showings, and so many offers were going way over asking price. Sometimes they were getting offers as great as 10% over asking! I'm curious to see how appraisals keep up with this because the comps aren't there to justify some of the prices I'm seeing. Buyers may have to start paying cash above the appraisal price in order to stay competitive. We'll see when we get numbers from April and May!

The New Listings data shows that going into March and into spring, that the market picks up a lot in the springtime.

Now here is a really interesting chart! Here is all Homes for Sale - the number of properties that are on the market for sale. Now you might have noticed over time that showings are down, but when you put it into the context of this chart, which shows the number of homes for sale at any given time, you can see that the number of homes AVAILABLE has gone down so much. There are half as many homes for sale as we had in January 2020. That's really fueling this frenzy of buyers you see - we have more buyers and fewer homes.

I think some of the reduction of homes for sale on this chart is also because homes are selling so quickly. Normally we'd have a bit of an inventory, but right now we just don't because as soon as something hits the market, it's going to be snatched up. Especially in the bottom price ranges - investor and starter homes, it is super competitive.

We can expect that when New Listings dip, Pending Sales can dip. You can see that here. Notice the dip in February, which is likely due to that freeze, which delayed a lot of closings.

Here we see the Median Days on Market are down. They're just on the market for a day, then they go under contract! A lot of them in the $200k and lower range goes straight to pending, with no option period because cash buyers are just buying them outright.

What we are seeing is kind of alarming if you are a buyer looking for a home under $250k. A lot of buyers are entering the market this spring and they just can't compete with the cash buyers out there.

Here you'll see the Price Per Square Foot over time has gone up, which follows the Median Price.

Wrap up

I hope these data are helpful. Anyone involved in the San Antonio market can feel these trends, even if they aren't presented with the data. This market is definitely a sellers' market and if you are a buyer it is going to be tough, especially with those starter homes and in that investor range. You'll need a really aggressive offer to be competitive. Hopefully as spring goes on, we will get more sellers and it will cool down a bit for the buyers.