SAN ANTONIO – For would-be homebuyers hoping to start 2026 in a new place, the housing market may finally be tilting in their favor.
However, for homeowners looking to sell, the process is taking longer and requiring more strategy.
According to Roland San Miguel of Trinidad Realty Partners, it’s currently taking around three months — sometimes even longer — for the average home in San Antonio to sell.
“We have a lot of supply, not enough demand,” San Miguel said.
He estimates that the city is sitting on about six months of housing inventory, a level that gives buyers more options and forces sellers to compete harder for attention.
San Miguel said several factors are contributing to the slowdown. A shaky economy has some potential buyers wary of making major financial commitments.
Mortgage interest rates, now around 6% to 6.5%, are also keeping some on the sidelines.
“Another factor is interest rates,” San Miguel said. “Interest rates are about six, six and a quarter right now, maybe six and a half. So there aren’t many buyers out there because they’re so used to the free money, basically at 2%. When it got to 2%, I was like, ‘Oh my God, I’ve never seen anything like this before.’”
Realtors are also losing some buyers to new-home builders, who are aggressively courting customers with incentives. Those can include paying for closing costs, temporarily buying down interest rates or adding upgrades and design extras to make new builds more attractive.
At the same time, home values remain high, and some sellers are pricing their houses too aggressively in a market where buyers are increasingly sensitive to costs.
“Bottom line is home values are high, people are pricing homes too high in a time when interest rates are high,” San Miguel said.
To move a home faster than the current three-month average, San Miguel said sellers need both motivation and realistic expectations.
First, he recommends hiring a realtor who will be honest about what it will take to sell the home at a realistic price.
“Sellers have to have an incentive to get rid of the home fast,” San Miguel said, noting that a good agent will lay out needed repairs, staging and pricing strategies upfront.
He also stresses the importance of presentation. Staging a home, San Miguel said, should make it look like a “perfect magazine home,” with each room clearly defined for a single purpose.
He advises against multipurpose spaces such as a combined office and gym. Instead, each room should have a clear theme that helps buyers imagine themselves living there.
Professional photography is another must, San Miguel said, given that most buyers’ first impression of a home comes from online listings.
When it comes to upgrades, San Miguel urges sellers to be strategic. Some improvements can help a house sell faster and for a better price, but not all investments pay off.
“Upgrades are very important,” he said. “A realtor will tell you, look, you need to do this and do this to get the value. It’s going to make the home sell a lot faster. But also, there are smart upgrades. You know, ‘Let’s add a pool.’ Adding a pool is going to run maybe $100,000 or $150,000. That’s not going to make your price $150,000 higher. So it’s making the smart upgrades that are important, that’s going to get you a return on your investment.”
San Miguel also offered guidance for homeowners choosing a real estate agent. He suggests asking how many homes the agent has sold, at what price points, and whether they have experience selling in the seller’s neighborhood. Just as important, he said, is asking friends and family for referrals to agents they know and trust.
Despite the longer selling times and higher interest rates, San Miguel cautions sellers not to be discouraged. He said that San Antonio’s housing market is fundamentally sound and behaving more like it did before the pandemic-era surge, when prices spiked and inventory plunged.
“Our market is actually very good,” he said. “Of course, we had that spike that went up there, but usually San Antonio is just steady eddy. It just grows 2-3% every year. We’re like a bond, just cruising along. Where other cities will go and have these high dips, we’re pretty steady.”
San Miguel said that after the pandemic’s wild housing boom, what San Antonio is experiencing now is the market balancing out.