San Antonio Home Sales And Prices Expected To Keep Rising

San Antonio area home sales should continue to surge in 2017, says one Texas economist. 
 
Mark Dotzour, formerly of the Texas A&M Real Estate Center, told attendees at the San Antonio Board of Realtor’s annual housing forecast Thursday that home prices should continue to rise as well, driven by a housing shortage.
 
"With thousands of people moving to San Antonio every year, the homebuilding industry just cannot keep up,” says Dotzour. We’re building a lot of apartments, but not enough single-family homes and part of that reason is it’s so difficult to get subdivision lots on the ground.”
 
Dotzour says that’s due in part to local regulations. He says a balanced housing market has about 6.5 months worth of inventory.
 
“When you get inventory levels as low as they are now in San Antonio—and I’m going to guess it’s about 3 months of inventory, about half of what is normal—you go out to look for a house, you may be lucky if you find one that’s of interest to you,” says Dotzour. “And that’s going to be of interest to a whole bunch of other people. That’s what drives prices up—that lack of selection in the market.”
 
The number of homes sold in San Antonio’s metro area last year was 27,059—a 46 percent from 2012, according to Board of Realtors’ data. The median home sales price grew 27 percent over that period to $203,700 in 2016. 
 
“It’s a great time to sell houses, because I think we’re in the early stages of a decade-long boom in single-family housing purchases,” Dotzour told a crowd of hundreds of real estate professionals. “I think people want to own homes again, and I think that trend is going to continue.”