The local housing market is still on track to break a sales record in 2017, but in March it grew more slowly than it has been for the last few years.

Last month, 2,528 homes were sold in the San Antonio area, an increase of 1 percent over March the year before, according to data released Monday by the San Antonio Board of Realtors. That’s one of the smallest increases since spring 2011, when the local housing market started recovering from the recession. Sales increased by 3.4 percent in February and 9.7 percent in January.

Still, it would be premature to say the market is cooling off, experts said. Jim Gaines, chief economist at the Texas A&M Real Estate Center, pointed out that the local area still has a high number of pending sales, or homes that are under contract to be sold but haven’t been closed on.

“Any time you have such a strong year, the next year it’s hard for the statistics to look as good because you’re starting from such a high base,” Gaines said. “We’re still seeing evidence of a good, solid market.”

Sales might have increased slowly in March because buyers rushed to purchase homes in January and February out of fear that mortgage rates were about to surge due to the policies of the incoming Trump administration, economist Mark Dotzour said. As it turns out, mortgage rates haven’t skyrocketed — the 30-year fixed mortgage rate was 4.08 percent last week, which is above last year’s low of 3.41 percent but below the rate of 4.3 percent reached in December, according to Freddie Mac.

“I don’t see a trend yet” when it comes to home sales, Dotzour said. “I would say the most likely explanation is that a lot of activity happened earlier in the year.”

A total of 6,165 homes were sold in the local area by the end of March, a 4 percent increase from the 5,927 homes sold during that time in 2016, according to SABOR’s data. The local housing market set a sales record last year, with 29,508 homes sold.

“We have not seen the market slow down,” said Yvette Allen, chairman of the board at SABOR. “It has just been a pretty consistent market.”

The median home price in the local area climbed by 1 percent in March, to $201,000. That’s the smallest increase in four years, apart from November 2015, when the median declined by nearly 1 percent, according to SABOR’s data. The median price for the first three months of the year rose by 3 percent, marking a return to normal after prices surged by more than 6 percent during most months in 2016, Gaines said.

The local area’s supply of homes on the market remains tight, indicating a seller’s market, but it loosened up in March for the second month in a row. The inventory of available homes — measured by the average time it takes for a home to be sold if no new homes are listed — was at 3.5 months in March, up from 3.3 months in February and a record low of 3.1 months in December.

An inventory of six months indicates a balance between buyers and sellers, Dotzour said.

“Three and a half months, that’s still ridiculously low,” he said.

Several neighborhoods near downtown experienced a surge in home sales last month, according to SABOR’s data. Sales in the 78203 ZIP code, which includes the near East Side neighborhood of Denver Heights, increased by 83 percent in March compared with that month last year, with 42 homes sold. In the 78208 ZIP code of Government Hill, just east of the Pearl, sales rose 50 percent, with 48 homes sold.

Sixty-one homes were sold in the 78215 ZIP code, including the stretch of Broadway running from downtown to the Pearl, a 20 percent increase from the year before.

rwebner@express-news.net

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