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Greater San Antonio

Housing Market Outlook for 2019

The Greater San Antonio Builders Association (GSABA) recently held the 2019 Housing Forecast
with our host, Jack Inselmann, Metrostudy. Jack has led the Association’s Housing Forecast for 34
years and we are very grateful for his continued leadership and support. Jack shared a wealth of
information on the greater San Antonio new home and pre-owned housing markets.
In 2018, Builders in the greater San Antonio area pulled new home permits and started
construction on 11,748 homes with a median price point of $268,911. Jack was optimistic that we
can get to 13,000+ new home starts in 2019.
He shared, there was an 18-month supply of developed lots on the ground and just over 14,000
Jeff Buell lots under development in the 4th quarter of 2018. Jack also emphasized how solid the local
President economy is and that San Antonio had a 3.1% unemployment rate in the 4th quarter of 2018
compared to the state and national unemployment rate of 3.5%.

Gene Dawson, President of Pape-Dawson Engineers, spoke at the Housing Forecast on, housing affordability and how it is squeezing
buyers’ choices even further. He provided the definition of ‘housing affordability’ and statistics show that families shouldn’t spend more
than 30% of their income on housing and unfortunately, housing costs are outpacing incomes.

Gene recently served on the Mayor’s Housing Policy Task Force with four other advisors to assist with the development of a
comprehensive and compassionate policy framework to address the pressing affordable housing challenges that our city faces. He
shared that home ownership rates in our community have dropped from 61% to 54% and one of the action items from the Mayor’s Task
Force was to protect and promote neighborhoods. He stressed that our neighborhoods are undergoing change and there continues to be
a growing affordability gap.
A recent study by the Texas A & M Research Center shows that for every price increase of $1,000 on a new home-22,000 potential buyers
are knocked out of the market. This statistic is startling, but it is good news that our City Leaders are being proactive and have strategies
and action items to develop a coordinated housing system to increase affordable housing production, rehabilitation and preservation.
Grant Lopez, 2019 Chairman of the Board for the San Antonio Board of Realtors (SABOR), reported at GSABA’s Board of Directors
meeting on Tuesday, January 15th that 32,140 homes sold in 2018 through the Multiple Listing Service with a median price of $221,000.
Grant also reported that pre-owned homes priced appropriately had listings that sold within 30 to 60 days from the date that they were
placed on the market. This is great news for our local economy.
In a recent Housing Trends Report, a survey conducted by the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB), many prospective home
buyers were already seeing static or shrinking inventory in late 2018. The majority (61%) said that during the third quarter of 2018 they saw
the same number or fewer homes for sale than they had during the three prior months.
Affordability squeezes buyers’ choices even further. For nearly 8 out of 10 prospective buyers in the survey, fewer than half of the houses
they saw on the market were priced within reach. That finding held for all age groups surveyed and holds true for our community as well.
In fact, for those who had been looking at least three months, the top reason why they hadn’t bought yet was, not finding a home they
could afford (49%), followed by not finding a home with desired features (40%) in their preferred location.

Join us for the Wells Fargo Economic class that will be hosted on Tuesday, February 5th at 11:30am at GSABA and gain valuable
information on where the Federal Reserve is headed as it relates to raising interest rates, an overview of consumer forward looking
indicators on consumer spending, and the Trump Administrations negotiations with China and how that affects our trade relations.

Housing is a major economy driver of our local, state and national economy. We can all be proud of our industry and together, we can
truly make a difference.

Sincerely,

6 FEBRUARY 2019 | GREATER SAN ANTONIO BUILDERS ASSOCIATION