The 'For Sale' sign goes up and the house is sold, but what we think of as a routine neighborhood transaction is in reality a major industry in Bexar County, with an economic impact of $36 billion a year and growing, News Radio 1200 WOAI reports.
"And around 62,000 folks in the San Antonio regional activity work directly for companies that are engaged in that particular kind of activity," said Peter Hockenyos, a prominent economist, who recently conducted a study for the local real estate industry.
That job number more than doubles when you take in employees of industries which deal with the strong real estate sector, from companies like Home Depot, interior designers, landscapers, and home repair firms.
Hockenyos says much of that growth comes from the city's booming development sector, but the residential sector remains strong and rapidly growing as well.
"On the demand side, things have really accelerated, at the same time, the environment for development is really accommodating, certainly things about the cost of money around interest rates."
Hockenyos says on the commercial and industrial real estate sector, the growth of the region, with San Antonio recently named the fastest growing big city in the USA, means more offices, more industrial facilities, more schools, and more government and military construction projects.
On the real estate side, new disruptive players like Door and Perch, which are pioneering new ways to buy and sell homes, are also adding to the mix.
What about the future?
With many economists predicting an economic downtown in the 2020 time frame, Hockenyos says the conditions in place which are led to today's strong growth should continue to be in place in case of an economic slowdown, including a good mix of industries in the local economy, and, especially, reasonable real estate prices, at least compared to other growth centers in the U.S. economy.
"At the end of the day, the fundamentals in San Antonio are very, very good," he said. "It is cost competitive in a lot of different ways, and has a lot of companies looking at the region and saying, 'you know something, we should be doing something there'."
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