Greetings once again.
This is one of my favorite times of the month. It’s time for me to give my thoughts on the San Antonio real estate market.
‣ According to Rocket Mortgage, San Antonio is still a sellers’ market. As I look at the data, I think it is a little confusing. The number of homes on the market increased by almost 8% last month, month over month, while the number of sales rose by about 2.5%. In contrast to Rocket Mortgage, if you look at the Redfin data, they say that San Antonio is a neutral market. Both reports agree that the average home price in San Antonio is about $287,000, however, according to Rocket Mortgage that number is up 8% year over year, and according to Redfin, it’s down 3% year over year. Days on the market continue to drop to about 55 days on the market from around 63 days on the market in last month’s newsletter.
‣ Last month, 54% of homes sold for less than the asking price, while this month I am happy to report that number is trending down again to about 50%. Here is a real-time update for you. As of late June, there are a little bit more than 1.5 months of housing inventory on the market. That is low, 3 months of inventory is about normal.
The San Antonio housing market appears to be strong, and I don’t anticipate housing prices falling anytime soon.
‣ Now, onto Bill’s business. We went under contract to sell a mobile home back in March. It has been painful to try and close that loan. It was an FHA loan and it was one thing after another that had to be done to that home. Supposedly, that home is going to close next week. The other house we had on the market just went under contract a couple of days ago. It was on the market for about 35 days. I made some mistakes on that one. I priced it a little too high and we were selling it either with bank financing or owner-finance. We had several offers, but most of them were FHA and VA financing. After the painful experience on the FHA loan for the mobile home, we were a little leery of taking another FHA loan and ended up going with an owner-finance contract. We had another house that we tried to put on the market as is after we bought it. That one had a ton of showings but we couldn’t get what we wanted for it. We took it off the market and put about $10,000 in it. Painting it and fixing some plumbing. We just put it back on the market yesterday, so I will let you know how that one is going next month.
‣ I am not sure what to make of the single-family market. The numbers say that it’s a seller’s market and that things are good. We had 50 showings on the house that just went under contract and probably 5 or 6 offers and looking back I think I priced that house a little high. Which would also tell me the housing market is strong. The house that we took off the market had a ton of showings but no one was willing to buy it and fix it up, which meant the market was a little bit weaker than I was expecting. I thought someone would snatch up that house. Overall, I think I am going to go with the data that says the San Antonio housing market is still strong, but I am a little worried we will see a slight dip to a more neutral market in the future. However, it is also my belief that if we see mortgage rates go down a little bit we could see a very strong housing market. Inventory is very tight and a small change in rates could mean a very strong San Antonio real estate market in the future.
‣ Let’s shift focus to the multi-family market. I’ve been saying for the past couple of months that the market has been frozen, and no deals are getting done. There was one deal that I invested in where I was very happy to be able to invest because I thought the numbers made sense and that deal plus some other deals that I was hearing about made me think that the multi-family market might be thawing. This does not seem to be the case. In my network of multi-family investors, everything is pretty quiet. Some of the other deals that I thought were going to get done seem to have fallen out of contract. On the new development side, things are still slow. The increase in development cost, coupled with slowing rent growth, makes it difficult for the numbers to make sense on the new development side. It appears there is a definite slowdown in new development in San Antonio at this time.
‣ Overall, I think the San Antonio single-family market is healthy. I have to admit I am not as bullish as I was one month ago on both the single-family side and the multi-family side. On the single-family side, everything says the market is good, and the numbers are all trending in the right direction but it doesn’t feel good to me because of the trouble I had selling that house. Funny, because I know I made mistakes selling that house. This is why I am going to trust the numbers but keep an eye out for a weakness in the single-family market. In the multi-family market, everyone is waiting and watching for what is going to happen. Sellers still seem to want too much for their properties and buyers still think there are better deals coming. We will continue to monitor the markets and update you on what is happening.
‣ In other news, I did a podcast. If you want to hear my story you can check it out here: https://drive.google.com/…/1ygwgu3N2OtmFeyKjgCkdlL…/view. You can also hear it on your favorite podcast app. It’s the Invest Smarter Podcast with Simon Castillo. The link I gave you is the cleaned-up version. I don’t know if Simon has had time to update the version that is on the podcast app.
‣ We are always looking for investors. Right now I am looking for a very specific investor. I am looking for someone to loan my LLC $110,000 for 5611 Chase Canyon. 5611 Chase Canyon is a property we have owned for 5 years that is worth about $225,000. We bought this property subject to the original mortgage and the guy we bought it from wants to get the mortgage off his credit report. We could sell the house and make a great profit but we love the house’s location and it’s a great rental property for us. We are looking to refinance this eventually at 6% using a conventional loan but until rates go down we are looking for an investor to loan us $110,000 at 8% amortized over 30 years with a balloon in 5 years. The loan will be secured by the house and our LLC.
‣ If you have any interest in loaning us this money or any questions please feel free to reach out at Bill@jbblcapital.com or helpforhomeownerssa@gmail.com.