San Antonio Real Estate Market Update: January 18, 2022

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. This is the first Market of 2022, so this is going to all of the latest data from December of last year. I’m really excited. This time of year there are a lot of experts that are making predictions about the upcoming year, so I’ve put some of those articles a the end of the presentation after the market data.

COVID-19 Update

Beginning with the local covid updates as usual, things seem to be worsening in San Antonio. There is an increasing positivity rate, all of the hospital trends are critical. Experts predicted this rise in cases after the holidays and with new variants in play. The good news is there are no new reported deaths. Omicron seems to be less sever than previous variants, but it is still pretty rough. Throughout the country, schools and businesses are short staffed, but hopefully we will get over this wave pretty quickly.

Local Market Data

I began doing these market updates right after the onset of COVID, so all of my charts started in March. So my charts were March-February, but now that we are on year 3 of data, I have decided to fix that and make the charts January-December. You’ll see that the blue line begins in March because that is when I started tracking this data. This data I’ve pulled each week from showings, which is not an easy task. It would be to difficult for me to find data on those missing week at this point, we will leave that line begging in March of 2020.

This first chart is the Single Family Home Showings Per Week. We are basically exactly on track of where we were last year.

Rental Showings Per Week are pretty much the same. I think that difference in the first week of January had to do with New Year’s Eve fell. The week began right After New Year’s Eve, so naturally there were a lot fewer showings. However, showings bounced back the following week.

Next we have Weekly Home Sales, and unfortunately I only have one week of new Home Sales data. You’ll notice that 2022 is only a dot on the chart at this point in time. Sales were a little bit lower than this time last year, but again, that could just be due to the holiday. So, we will just have to wait and see where we are next month.

Weekly Median Price is still incredibly high. We have become accustomed to seeing the significante gap between the years. 2022 is starting out with the Median Price being well over $300,000. If I am remembering correctly, I believe the price is $305,000 or maybe $300,000. I anticipate that this will just continue to skyrocket over time.

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On to Median Sales Price. There was a point a few months ago when I made a short video about this changing data. For awhile it seems that the charts were leveling out. I thought that the market might be reaching a level of balance or even possibly slow down a bit. But, when we entered October and November, the numbers started to climb again. As you can see below, the Median Sales Price is on an upward trend.

New Listings are down across all price ranges. Keep in mind that this last data point is from December, and a decrease in New Listings is fairly typical because it is right in the middle of holiday season. You can see that that we are pretty much exactly where we were last year with New Listings, so this is a to-be-expected dip.

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Homes for Sale are obviously down, because if there are fewer New Listings there are going to be fewer Homes for Sale.

Pending Sales are also down due to the holiday months.

Interestingly enough, Closed Sales actually increased in December. It’s unexpected given that the number of Homes for Sale and pending sales are down, is a little strange, bit not a lot. So, I don’t it’s anything to worry about.

Median Days on Market is starting to creep up just a little bit. We have 30 days on market for some of the price ranges, which is higher than we’ve seen for about a year. There numbers are still quite low. We are still 25-30 days for most price ranges, so it really hasn’t slowed down all that much.

Median Price Per Square Food, is again, increasing. We see this most in the $325,000 or more range. But, even in the lower price ranges there is an increase. I was thinking in September, October, and November were kind of leveling out, but we are on the climb again.

Median Percent of Last List Price is still holding steady at 100%. For a buyer this means that we are not where we were last year where buyers were overbidding and going way over the sales price. You are still going to have to offer sales price if you want to get something under contract. Sellers are going to expect a full price offer.

Months Supply of Homes for Sale are dipping severely once again, and you can see that this is very much on par with where we were this time last year. It’s just the usual winter slump, because there are fewer listings, so of course, there is a smaller supply.

I’m a little disappointed, because I usually provide data from Saber, but when I checked yesterday, they hadn’t released any yet. So, I don’t have those specific numbers available right now, but when they are released, I’ll probably just make a short video. The biggest one I always look at is the Average Rent Price, but it is also nice to see the Year-to-Year Appreciation and things like that. When I have the data, I’ll do an Instagram Reel to talk about those numbers, because I don’t want to wait another months and be talking about data that is then 2 months old.

Here we have the last 5 years of Median Sales Price form Independence Title. You can see that we leveled out for a moment then things started to rise again.

Sales Volume is doing its yearly dip, but I fully expect that we will see it start to pick back up just like it did in 2019 and 2020. I think we can all expect it to go back to skyrocketing in the spring.

Months of Inventory is, again, super low. We aren’t quite as low as in the spring this year, but still ridiculous. I like to say that 6 months is kind of a balanced market, and so, we’re at less than 2 Months of Inventory. That just tell how dramatically this market favors the seller.

Residential Sales, or the number of homes sold, is down a little bit from last year, but again, I attribute this to the holidays. We’ll see where that ends up going in January and February.

Here we have the Average Sales Price. I usually like to talk about the Median Sales Price, because I think that is a better indicator, because with the average, you tend to have large properties and mansions skewing those numbers. A $360,000 Average Sales Price, I think for any San Antonian, I kinda blows the mind.

With all of this data we have seen that we’re in a hot market; it’s a sellers’ market, and it is not slowing down. We thought for a moment that things might be balancing out, but as you can see, that is not the case. I wanted to think of some reasons this might be happening. A lot of people are talking about the San Antonio Market and how hot it is, so I just screen grabbed some headlines that I found. The National Association of Realtors named San Antonio one of the Top 10 Hidden Gems, and we’ll talk a little more about what that means in the next slide. San Antonio was ranked the 4th hottest housing market by Zillow. They combined New Braunfels and San Antonio in this ranking. Realtor.com forecasts that San Antonio is going to grow more than Austin and Houston in 2022.

We have experts who access to far more data than I do, calling San Antonio a great place to invest.

The NAR is predicting that the San Antonio Market is going to be a stronger market than others. They are predicting that the entire housing market is going to remain strong, but that San Antonio is going to continue to get even hotter.

San Antonio real estate market: Stats & trends for 2022 by Jeff Rohde

I found this article, San Antonio real estate market: Stats & trends for 2022, from roofstock, a must read because it is one of the best written articles Ive read on the San Antonio market. He breaks it down into job sectors, renters, and everything you could want to know. He provides the data and a synopsis of it. I especially recommend it for people form out of state who are trying to get a read on the San Antonio Market. I pulled a couple of highlights from it. It repeats the NAR stats that we just talked about but goes further in saying that the NAR believes prices are still undervalued relative to the underlying market fundamentals. It states that San Antonio has been ranked as one fo the most stable markets for rental activity in the nation according to a 2020 year-end report from Rent Cafe. According to the San Antonio Business Journal, Gen Z is the most active renter generation in San Antonio. As home sales continue to surge, prices are rising and inventory is tightening making rental property in San Antonio an increasingly popular investment. That’s one synopsis he made, but he continues on to talk about rental prices and and rent statistics. He says that rent prices are rising in San Antonio with median rent for a 3 bedroom home increasing by 13% year over year. He talks about some of the factors that go into that increase. He then says San Antonio is one of the most stable markets for rental activity in the U.S. According to The San Antonio Business Journal, about 60% of rental applications come from renters moving from somewhere else in the city. Strong performance in San Antonio is one reason why Wallet Hub ranks San Antonio as one of the best cities for renters. The report analyzed more than 180 rental markets using the same key measures real estate investors use, including activity in the real estate market, cost of living, and growth in the job market.

Conclusion

Basically, we have all of the major players in real estate form the Board of Realtors, to Zillow, Realtor.com, and roofstock. All of these players are really focusing on San Antonio as having really good fundamentals and still being undervalued compared to what we offer. For most San Antonians, this growth is hard for us to wrap our heads around because San Antonio has always been a very affordable city with a good cost of living. We are at a median price of $320,000, and not even a decade ago I purchased my first starter home for like $100,000. However, compared to other markets, we are still undervalued and still cheaper than a lot of those other markets that have the same job growth and the same positive attributes as the San Antonio Markets. All of these companies are predicting things are just going to get hotter here. BIG DISCLAIMER: No one can predict the future, anything can happen, none of us could have predicted 2020, none of us could have predicted 2021. If we’ve learned anything at this point, it is that we have no idea what is coming. However, like I stated before, the experts are predicting growth. That is bad news if your a buyer, but great news if you’re the seller.

I hope that all of this was interesting and helpful. Make sure to follow me on Instagram if you don’t already, so that you can see the Reel when I get updated numbers. Comment below, I want to hear what you think is going to happen in the market this year. What do you think of the predictions from all of these companies? I love to hear what you guy have to say, and you all have some great insights as well.