Home sales in San Antonio take biggest hit since pandemic

Home sales in San Antonio have taken the biggest dip since the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic as rising interest rates take a different toll on the market.

Single-family home sales fell by almost 20 percent from October 2021 to 2022, the San Antonio Express-News reported. The data from the San Antonio Board of Realtors showed the largest year-over-year decline in home sales since May 2020.

Rising prices and near-record mortgage rates have brought the market closer to its pre-pandemic level. Over the past year and a half, sellers had the upper hand as demand and prices flew through the roof and inventory dwindled. Now, with slower sales comes more inventory, and houses are sitting on the market as sellers struggle to find buyers.

Buyers closed on 2,656 homes in Bexar and the surrounding counties in San Antonio in October. The average time a home spent on the market rose 57 percent from last year to 44 days. The available inventory also rose to 3.3 months from 1.7 months.

Steady increases in interest rates have dampened demand and brought a halt to big run ups in home prices, with the median price of a home sold in the San Antonio area at $323,190–still up from a year earlier but down from more recent peaks. The average rate for a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage was 6.58 percent in October, more than 3 percent higher than a year ago.

Freddie Mac’s Sam Khater (Freddie Mac)

“In recent weeks, rates have hit above 7 percent, only to drop by almost half a percentage point,” Sam Khater, chief economist at mortgage financing giant Freddie Mac, told the outlet. “This volatility is making it difficult for potential homebuyers to know when to get into the market.”
San Antonio saw 38,448 homes sold in 2020 and 37,332 in 2021. From October 2021 to 2022, 31,731 San Antonio homes have sold.

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