San Antonio home sales pulled from slump as they jump over 50 percent

by Ernest Enriquez

San Antonio home sales in 2023 were stagnant for the most part as prices rose while we moved out of the hot COVID pandemic market that saw homes flying off the shelves with low interest rates. New numbers from the San Antonio Board of Realtors (SABOR) seem to signal that the market might just be over that post-pandemic hump.

The San Antonio-Area Market Report from SABOR shows that the number of home sale closings jumped 57% from January to March 2024. That's a an increase from 2,064 closings in January to 3,244 in March, according to SABOR data. The three-month increase is a far jump from the last three months of 2023, which saw a decrease from 2,439 closings in October 2023 to 2,411 in December 2023.

The recent increase comes even as the median sale price for home rose from $290,000 in January to $310,223 in March. That median home sale price is down from the October 2023 price of $313,990, when homebuyers started to back out of sales and houses stayed on the market. This is even with higher mortgage rates that increased from the typical 3% seen amid the pandemic.

Homes are still sitting on the market longer but SABOR's 2024 Chair of the Board, Will Curtis, said in a recent news release that the number of days homes stay for sale is an indicator of a healthy market.

"The average number of days on the market increased by 7% to 79 days, suggesting a slightly longer selling period for properties, compared to March 2023," Curtis says in the news release. "The months of inventory remained balanced at 4.4,providing a healthy market environment for buyers and sellers alike."

By Steven Santana,Digital ReporterMay 1, 2024