San Antonio Market Update 12/22/21

Welcome back! Let’s take a look at the latest San Antonio Real Estate Market data trends. Read on or watch the video to see what’s been happening.

COVID-19 Update

Beginning with the local covid updates as usual, San Antonio has been hit by with Omicron variant, it is mild right now and holding steady. A lot of new cases how every hospitalizations and ICU numbers are lowe than they have been. Not great, but not terrible. Hopefully things will remain the same after the holidays.

Local Market Data

This first chart is the Single Family Home Showings Per Week. We are exactly where we were this time last year. You can see that in the last week of November there was a Thanksgiving slump in showing, normal and to be expected. In general you can expect things to be a little slower during the holiday season, but I am confident that after the new year, things will pop back up. All this being said, showings are still happening. If you are a landlord or need to sell your home, fewer showings isn’t a reason to not list your property. In San Antonio, we always have buyers as new people arriving into town all the time.

Rental Showings are nearly the same as they were this time last year, but with a slightly more severe dip during the Thanksgiving Holiday. However, you can see, things rebounded the next week more than making up for it.

Weekly Home Sales are also nearly the same as last year, but just as Rental Showings, there was a more severe dip during the Thanksgiving holiday. However, showings rebounded the following week.

Median Price is still much higher than last year. We blew right past the $300,000 median home price and things keep rising. I chose to represent Median Home Price as opposed to Average Home Price because I believe it is a more accurate representation. Median Price isn’t skewed by multimillion dollar listings, and large properties like ranches outside the city.

Median Sales Price leveled off in October and November landing right around the $300,000 mark.

New Listings are decreasing. We expect that going into November; if you look at the chart, you can see this the line is almost exactly where is was this time in 2020. When I’m doing the January Update, I expect it to follow last year’s pattern and continue the trend downward.

Homes For Sale are lower; again, fewer New Listings means fewer Homes for sale.

Pending Sales are also lower. Fewer New Listings will result in fewer Pending Sales and fewer Closed Sales. If you compare the lines in this chart, you can see that this seems to be following its normal cyclical pattern.

Median Days on Market have leveled out in the low 20s, 22-24 and they seem to be staying at that level.

Median Price Per Square Foot had a noticeable increase compared to this time last year. The $325,000 or more line moved up a bit raising the whole average. I don’t think this spike is anything to worry with.

With Percent of Last List Price we are at 100% right now. Over the span of a few months we saw this rise beyond 100% but it has come back down. This to me indicates that we are still very much in a sellers’ market. If you are a buyer coming in, you should offer full price, if that makes sense of course. Always pull comps to make sure that the List Price is accurate. But for the most part, if you are going to get a house under contract, it is going to be at list price.

For Months Supply of Homes for Sale, I consider 6 months to be a balanced market, but we are at 1.5 of inventory in the San Antonio market, once again indicating that we a in a sellers’ market.

Now we are moving on to the SABOR Market Statistics data which is gathered from the Real Estate Center at Texas A&M University. This is a really wonderful source of data if you are in real estate and are wondering about trends, be sure to check out the website for the Real Estate Center at Texas A&M.

November Single Family Home Sales saw a slight decrease but nothing to worry about.

Prices are as expected. Almost a 20% increase year over year. The median price right now is $307.200.

For Days on Market, last year we say 49 days on market, and this year we are down to 32 days.

Multifamily Sales saw a bit of a decrease, but remember that with the low numbers here, it’s just keeping the pulse.

Increase on Multifamily prices is pretty much to be expected. I suspect that the average increase has been skewed by a very expensive fourplex thrown in there. The median has increased in accordance with the market.

With Residential Rentals we know November is a slow months with not much tenant movement. 950 rented out which is comparable to the 984 units that were rented out in 2020. The Rent Prices have increased 8%, so now the average Rent Price in San Antonio is $1,670. Keep in mind that these numbers dont reflect apartments. These are mostly single family homes with an occasional townhome or condo thrown in. So if you are looking to rent a home in San Antonio, you are looking at an average price of $1,670. I find this really high, so while putting this together I gathered information on the San Antonio average income. So, in San Antonio the median household income is $52,455 according to the Census Bureau. For landlords and property managers the general rule is that an applicants income needs to exceed three times the amount of rent. Doing the math, they would need to earn $5,000 a month, coming out to $60,000 a year. I wanted to point this out because now we are in a situation where the average rent now exceeds a third of the average household income. I’d love to hear from some of you property managers or landlords who have found a solution to this problem. How do you find tenants? Do you just change you acceptance rules and eligibility criteria? What is your answer, I’m incredibly curious about this.

Now moving on to more data. I collect this from Independence Title, once again all of this is free on their website. I like to include this because as opposed to only comparing 2021 to 2020, this graph compares this year to the last five. We see that 2021 far exceeded all of the other years, but I think this has to do with the prices rising, not necessarily more homes being sold

With Median Sales Price, you can see that it leveled out for awhile, but is now continuing to climb. We had a steady progression from 2017-2020, then all of the sudden with 2021, there is a huge gap.

Average Sales Price is the same story.

Sales Volume, again, same story.

For Months of Inventory about this time last year we were at 2.5 and now we are down to 1.5 moths on inventory. So we are in an incredibly hot market.

Conclusion

I sometimes feel like a broken record, but prices are still up. It’s still a sellers’ market. I don’t know about next year. I’m unsure of how the Great Resignation is going to affect the market, but I have a hunch that San Antonio is safe because of all the industry we have here.

I hope this this market will find a happy balance where everyone can get what they need. I hope this was helpful. Leave a comment down below if you have any questions. If you have any other sources or anything to add please let me know. And as usual I’m on all the social media channels; follow for more. Have a great Holiday Season, and I’ll see you next time!