San Antonio housing is booming

I am frequently asked if there's a "bubble" in San Antonio real estate. My easy answer is "No." San Antonio real estate is appreciating rapidly, but it's still extremely inexpensive to live in San Antonio. As investors in over-appreciated markets like Claifornia lose confidence, San Antonio appears as one of the top places to relocate their investment dollars.

Housing is gaining as one of San Antonio's top industries ($9.4billion impact!), bypassing the military and tourism, and running second to the health care industry in ecoinomic impact. Roy Brag of the Express News lists the benchmarks in a review of the San Antonio housing industry published on June 10th, 2006.

Most of the benchmarks reflect tremendous growth outside Loop 410 and 1604, but over all, San Antoino has a robust market and lots of skilled workers making a decent wage.

A few benchmarks: San Antonio housing starts for 2005 were at 16,500, up 27% from 2004. Projections for 2006 are for 18,000 housing starts, according to American Metrostudy.

In the article, Travis Kesler, president and CEO of the San Antonio Board of Realtors notes that existing homes are selling at a record pace. There were 22,000 existing home sales in 2005, up from 19, 523 in 2004. Exististing sales in 2003 and 2002 were at 17,510 and 15,967 homes, respectively. Wow!

The new building starts are on the fringes of San Antonio and keep marching farther out. Most of my clients are located inside Loop 410 and their investments aren't at risk of their investments becoming redundant by the next development down the road. Me? I wouldn't invest in another cookie cutter neighborhood way outside of San Antonio, and not just because of building over sensitive aquifer recharge zones and the rising gasoline costs. But then again, I'm an inner-city kind of fellow and I guarantee San Antonio can't keep up with its growing population with in-fill developments.