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San Antonio is bucking the national real estate trend, putting a healthy number of starter homes on the ground, on track for a record-setting year for new-home construction.
Many have lamented the lack of starter homes — affordable to debt-strapped millennials — in the current housing market. Figures out from the San Antonio Board of Realtors, however, show 43% of homes sold in July were under $200K, while just over half were priced at the midrange of the market, between $200K and $500K.
“This is the fourth consecutive month that 50% or more of the homes sold have been in the midrange of prices,” SABOR’s 2017 chairman of the board, Yvette Allen, said in a market update in August. “However, despite the rise in home costs, buyers have not been deterred from the market and we continually see them take advantage of the low interest rates to get a little more house for their money.”
Nationally, housing starts are expected to climb through 2019, according to Metrostudy. Metrostudy’s latest quarterly survey of San Antonio showed housing starts outpaced closings during the second quarter. A total of 6,436 homes were in inventory at the end of the quarter: models, finished vacant and under construction. That breaks down to 4,097 homes under construction, and another 1,865 classified as finished vacant, which means a lot ready for home construction.
According to Metrostudy's Jack Inselmann, this represents a 7.6-month supply of homes for sale. San Antonio has about 19,000 vacant developable lots in the market, a 20.8-month supply. Over the last year, the San Antonio market has delivered 11,900 new lots. Approximately 8,500 lots were under construction, in the pipeline, at the end of the second quarter.
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