– Dan and Claudia Solis finally got the house after a sometimes discouraging hunt. The first-time home buyers know first-hand just how competitive the housing market is right now.
“We were putting in bids over asking , quite a bit over, and then getting outbid by cash offers,” Dan Solis said. As they found out, the list price is often starting price, cash is king and there is a lot more demand than there are for-sale signs. That supply and demand imbalance is driving prices up.
The median price of an existing house that sold in San Antonio in March was $326,5000, according to the San Antonio Board of Realtors. That’s a 22% increase over the same time last year. Tracie Hasslocher, SABOR chairman, describes the local market as “busy, competitive, and continuing to grow.”“If you are a buyer in the $299,000-and-below category, it is very, very hard to find a home right now,” she said.There were 3,522 existing homes sold in San Antonio last month, representing a modest 1% increase over last year. Experts attribute that, in part, to budget-constrained and first-time buyers beginning to be priced out and rising mortgage rates.