Expect to see the red hot housing market in San Antonio remain red hot in 2018, a key real estate economist told the San Antonio Board of Realtors annual Housing Forecast, News Radio 1200 WOAI reports.
Dr. Mark Dotzour, the long time head of the Real Estate Center at Texas A&M and now a private economist, says the same factors which propelled record sales and price increases in 2017 are still in place.
"The job growth continues to look strong, mortgage rates don't appear to be poised to go up very much in the next twelve months," he said. "I am very bullish about the housing market in San Antonio."
But there are indications that the housing market is getting too bullish. Dotzour says he doesn't see a bubble, but he is concerned about the fact that rising housing prices are beginning to fly out of reach for more and more families, leading to the explosion of apartment construction now being seen around the city.
Dotzour says you can blame that on two factors apart from the rush to buy homes. He says it is more difficult to plat land for new neighborhoods, and fewer developers are focusing on lower end new homes.
Mayor Ron Nirenberg has made housing affordability a key concern of his administration and has appointed a task force to look into ways to deal with it.
But Doztour says the biggest blame for that falls on City Hall.
He says a cornucopia of new fees and regulations, always sold to the public as charges on 'wealthy developers,' but, obviously, passed along to home buyers, has done much to push the price of homes out of reach.
"What kind of regulatory requirements have we placed on new homes in the past decade," he asked. "Lets put a cost to all those and do a cost benefit analysis."
He says federal regulations, many of which were approved following the mortgage melt down of 2008, are also making it more difficult for younger and lower income families to buy homes in Texas.
"We need to be careful and reexamine all of the regulatory requirements that go into putting up a house," he said.