San Antonio Housing ‘Hangover’: Why Homeowners Face a Historic Tax Hike as Values Drop

Property values in San Antonio, TX, have fallen so dramatically that the city council is considering raising taxes for the first time in 33 years.

At a recent city council meeting, City Manager Erik Walsh said that the general fund, which pays for services such as the fire and police departments, and parks and libraries, has a deficit of $70 million.

The reason for the shortfall: Taxable values on existing San Antonio properties are down 3.5%, and overall taxable value, which includes new properties, is down 2.1%.

The budget crunch follows an astonishing boom-and-bust cycle for home values in San Antonio. Four years ago, in spring 2022, median listing prices there surged more than 20% year over year, according to Realtor.com® data.

But since early 2023, home prices in San Antonio have been in decline. April's median listing price of $324,700 was down 4.5% from a year ago, and nearly 10% less than the same month in 2022. The pullback has effectively wiped most of the price gains of the pandemic housing market boom.

Realtor.com senior economic research analyst Hannah Jones says that San Antonio, like other Central Texas markets, is suffering a hangover from the homebuilding frenzy seen there during the peak of the pandemic-era boom.

"San Antonio has been an active new-home construction market since the onset of the pandemic," she says. "Builders kept delivering homes even as demand softened post-2022, adding to an already swelling resale inventory. This supply-side pressure is difficult to quickly absorb."

Jones notes that home prices in San Antonio have hovered in the low- to mid-$320,000 range for nearly a year, saying it suggests "the market has found a floor but shows no meaningful recovery."

What local agents are seeing

San Antonio real estate agent Celia Taylor with Taylor & Taylor tells Realtor.com she's seen a flatlining in prices, but believes the market will hold steady.

"There's been a correction in the market," she concedes, but adds that while prices "aren't appreciating" nor are they "going backwards."

She sees a lot of sellers who are "right-sizing" (either buying larger or smaller, depending on their current needs) and staying in the area, which allows them to price more realistically, keeping her listings from stagnating.

"They're buying back into the same market, so they can afford to price their house right," she says.

She notes that some of those who migrated from pricier states such as California during the pandemic are now reversing their move—headed back home, often to be with their families.

Though Taylor and her husband and business partner, Stephen Taylor, have lived in other areas of the U.S., including Maine and California, she says they prefer San Antonio.

"There's employment and opportunities to own a home here that weren't available to us elsewhere," she tells Realtor.com. "Across the board, I feel pretty good about pricing in the market."

Local agent Miguel Mata of Living Lavish Realty, who previously spoke to Realtor.com about the rapidly selling tiny home market in the city, says that he's seen prices actually rise since last year.

"I'm not seeing prices drops, absolutely not," he insists.

While the 2022–2023 interest rate surge hit San Antonio first-time homebuyers hard, Mata says his clients—90% of whom purchase new construction—are better positioned, reaping fixed rates as low as 3.99%, nearly half as low as standard, thanks to builder incentives.

"That's a major difference," he says.

Despite a new-build oversupply, Mata says that new homes in masterplanned communities such as D.R. Horton's Riverstone-at-Westpoint, where they start around $250,000, and Lennar's Brookmill, with an even lower entry point of $155,000, continue to move.

However, he notes that he has a strong military clientele—whom he markets to through his popular TikTok account—thanks to the area's large military installations, giving him a robust buyer pool.

"There's a lot of movement when it comes to military [homebuyers]," he says. "And right now is the season when they are PCSing [permanent change of station], when they get a new contract to transfer and come to San Antonio specifically for their new jobs."

San Antonio's tax dilemma

Officials say that without a property tax rate increase of at least 3.5%, San Antonio's looming $70 million deficit is projected to double within two years. The city would then have to cut $131 million from the budget.

In a conservative state where taxes—especially property taxes—are anathema to many, some members of the council argued that instead of raising rates, more budget cuts could be made.

"People don't want to pay higher property taxes," Councilman Jalen McKee-Rodriguez said at the May 6 meeting, according to the San Antonio Express-News. "They don't want us to cut their services. And so where do we go from here?"

The Texas market in general

Other Texas markets, including Austin, Dallas, and Houston, are all experiencing similar, though less dramatic, dynamics, according to Realtor.com data. 

"The whole Texas metro corridor built heavily during the pandemic boom and is now working through excess supply," says Jones.

"We are seeing a slowdown of sales, everything is taking longer to sell than the same time last year," agrees Paige Elliott of the Elliott & Elliott Real Estate Group of the Greater Dallas metro area.

Indeed, days on market bottomed at 30 to 32 days in mid-2022 and have climbed significantly since then, hitting 85 days in January 2026 before settling back to roughly 53 to 79 days in recent months, according to Realtor.com data.

"That's well above the pandemic lows and back to or above pre-pandemic norms (about 50 to 70 days in 2017–2019), indicating buyer urgency has largely evaporated," says Jones.

"Prices are not dramatically dropping in our market, but buyers are not in a hurry," Elliott stresses.

She adds though she's seen a few rapid sales with multiple offers, the properties have to tick every box and be "very" specific to what the buyers want.