San Antonio Real Estate Market Update: What September 2026 Means for Buyers and Sellers

Last updated: September 8, 2026 | By Christopher Beal, U.S. Army veteran & REALTOR

In August 2026 the median Bexar County home closed at $280,000 across all 1,851 residential MLS closings, down 4.0 percent from August 2025, with a median 60 days on market. Sellers are currently asking a median of $309,500, about 10.5 percent above what the market is actually paying, and that gap is the single most important number in San Antonio real estate right now.

I am Christopher Beal, a U.S. Army veteran, REALTOR, TREC License #723559, and the Owner of Veteran Real Estate San Antonio, a practice brokered by eXp Realty. My work is documented here, and every figure on this page was pulled from the SABOR / LERA MLS on September 8, 2026 with the exact filters shown under each table.

What San Antonio Homes Actually Closed At in August 2026

Most market updates quote a median and move on. The problem with that is scale: the curated MLS reporting tools cap their result sets at 1,000 records and then report the median of that capped slice as if it were the whole market. Bexar County recorded 1,851 residential closings in August. A 1,000-record sample of those is not the county median, and the difference is real money.

So every figure below was pulled by paginating the complete result set to the middle record. Where a number is a sample, it says so.

Source: SABOR / LERA MLS via the RESO Web API. Filters: PropertyType RE, MlsStatus SLD, CloseDate 2026-08-01 through 2026-08-31, CountyOrParish BEXAR and City SANANTONIO respectively. Complete coverage, verified by paginating to the final record (n = 1,851 and n = 1,494). Pulled September 8, 2026.

Is the San Antonio Housing Market Going Down in 2026?

Prices are down modestly and volume is down modestly. Neither is a collapse, and neither is noise.

Source: SABOR / LERA MLS, RESO Web API. Filters: PropertyType RE, MlsStatus SLD, CountyOrParish BEXAR, CloseDate within each calendar month. Complete coverage both years (n = 1,930 and n = 1,851), medians taken at the middle record of the fully paginated set. Pulled September 8, 2026.

A 4 percent give-back on the median over twelve months, with days on market up by two, is a market that has stopped rewarding optimistic pricing. It is not a market that has stopped transacting. Nearly 1,900 Bexar County families still closed on a home in a single month.

The more useful read is the spread inside that median. A quarter of August closings landed at or below $214,999, and a quarter landed at or above $383,950. San Antonio is not one market. It is at least three, and the entry-level quarter behaves very differently from the top quarter.

Why the Asking Price and the Selling Price Are $29,500 Apart

As of September 8, 2026 there were 7,331 active residential listings in Bexar County with a median asking price of $309,500. The median August closing was $280,000. That is a $29,500 gap, or about 10.5 percent.

Two things create that gap, and only one of them is fixable by a seller.

The first is mix. Active inventory skews toward newer and larger homes, particularly on the far west and north sides, so the pool of what is for sale is not identical to the pool of what sold. Some of the spread is composition, not overpricing.

The second is genuine asking-price drift, and it is the reason the median active listing has been sitting about 51 days while the median sale is closing in 60. Homes priced into the closing band are moving. Homes priced into the asking band are accumulating days.

Is 4 Months of Supply a Buyer's Market or a Seller's Market?

Dividing 7,331 active Bexar County listings by 1,851 August closings gives 4.0 months of supply. The conventional dividing line is roughly six months: below that is usually described as favoring sellers, above it as favoring buyers.

Four months is neither extreme. What it means in practice is that a correctly priced, well presented home still sells inside a normal window, while a mispriced one has nowhere to hide, because a buyer touring this weekend has roughly four months of alternatives to compare it against.

The months-of-supply figure is also worth reading with the days-on-market figure beside it. Sixty days to a closed sale, on a market carrying four months of choice, describes a patient market rather than a panicked one in either direction.

What This Means If You Are Selling in San Antonio This Fall

Three things follow directly from the numbers above.

Your list price has to start inside the closing band. The 25th to 75th percentile range of August closings was $214,999 to $383,950. If your home belongs in the middle of that range and you list above it hoping to negotiate down, you are not competing for the buyers who are actually closing. Price reductions after 30 days recover far less than a correct opening price.

Sixty days is the planning number, not thirty. If you are moving on a deadline, count backward from your closing date using a 60 day median time on market plus 30 to 45 days to close. That is a 90 to 105 day working window before your target date. Military families on PCS orders should read the military relocation guide alongside this, because report dates do not move to accommodate a slow listing.

Condition is doing more work than it did a year ago. With 7,331 competing listings, the marginal buyer is choosing between your home and several others in the same price band on the same weekend. Presentation is where the gap between a 30 day sale and a 90 day sale usually lives.

If you want the specific number for your address rather than the county median, the home evaluation page is the fastest way to start, and I will pull the closed comparables for your ZIP rather than quoting you a countywide figure. My full listing process is described in this guide to deciding whether to sell.

What This Means If You Are Buying in San Antonio This Fall

A market with 7,331 active listings and a median 60 day time on market gives a buyer two things that were scarce in 2021 and 2022: choice, and time to think.

The practical version is that you can write an offer with an option period, an inspection, and a financing contingency without automatically losing the house. You can also ask. On a market where the median asking price sits about 10.5 percent above the median closed price, a listing that has been sitting for 60 or 90 days has a seller who has already watched the market disagree with their price.

What you should not do is assume the discount is automatic. Homes priced correctly at the outset are still closing near list. The negotiating room is concentrated in the listings that opened high, which is exactly why days on market is worth checking on every home you tour.

If you are weighing a purchase against a lease renewal, the break-even math depends on your holding period, your rate, your rent, and your transaction costs. I laid the scenarios out in the rent versus buy breakdown rather than giving a one-size answer, because the honest answer changes with how long you plan to stay. For a general walkthrough of the process, see buying a home in San Antonio.

What This Market Looks Like for VA Buyers and Military Families Near JBSA

A median closed price of $280,000 in Bexar County matters differently when you are buying with a VA loan and no down payment, because the entire purchase price is being financed.

Two points that are frequently blurred together and should not be. The VA sets no minimum credit score; individual lenders set their own overlays, and those overlays are what most buyers actually run into. Separately, VA entitlement and a lender's approval are two different tests, and clearing one does not clear the other. The VA home loan page covers the mechanics.

The practical effect of a 4.0 month supply market on a VA offer is that seller concessions are negotiable again. In a market where sellers have four months of competition, a request for the seller to cover closing costs is an ordinary negotiation rather than a deal-killer, and that matters more to a zero-down buyer than a small movement in the price itself.

My Serve and Save program reduces closing costs for military and veteran clients on top of whatever is negotiated with the seller. Details are on the Serve and Save page. For the military-specific read of these same monthly numbers, see the San Antonio market update for military and VA buyers.

How I Verify These Numbers Before I Publish Them

This section exists because the standard market-report figure is frequently wrong, and the failure is invisible unless you go looking for it.

The reporting tools most agents use return a maximum of 1,000 records per query and then compute a median across that capped slice. For a ZIP code with 119 sales that is fine. For Bexar County with 1,851 monthly sales, or a six month window with nearly 10,000, the returned median is the median of an arbitrary 1,000-record subset. I have measured errors above 6 percent from that alone.

So for every county-level or city-level figure on this page I do four things, in this order:

1. Run the query and read the returned record count. If it comes back at exactly 1,000, I treat it as a sample and not as an answer.
2. Establish the true count by paginating with a binary search on the offset until the result set empties, which is how the 1,851 and 7,331 figures above were confirmed.
3. Fetch the middle record directly at that offset, so the median is an actual closed sale rather than an average of a truncated list.
4. Record the count, the filter string, the date window and the ordering, so any figure here can be reproduced or challenged.

If a number on this page is a sample rather than complete coverage, it is labeled as one in the same sentence. That is the whole standard.

Frequently Asked Questions About the San Antonio Market

About the Author

Christopher Beal is a U.S. Army veteran and the Owner of Veteran Real Estate San Antonio, a Beal Group practice brokered by eXp Realty (TREC License #723559). A Military Relocation Professional (MRP) and VAREP member, he is a 7-time eXp Realty ICON agent, winner of Best Real Estate Agency in the 2026 Best of San Antonio Readers' Choice (San Antonio Current, 100,000+ voters), and a 3x San Antonio Business Journal Top 25 Individual Agent (#13 in 2024, #14 in 2025, #20 in 2026). His recognition also includes 3x Platinum Top 50, 2x RateMyAgent Agent of the Year, 2x Real Producers Top 100, Five Star Professional (2026), and a RealTrends 2026 ranking. He has helped 325+ families, closed more than $125M in career volume, and holds 5.0 stars across 370+ verified reviews, working almost exclusively with military and veteran buyers and sellers across Bexar, Comal, Kendall, Medina, and Bandera counties, with a focus on VA loans, PCS moves, and homebuying near JBSA-Lackland, JBSA-Randolph, and Fort Sam Houston. He pulls and paginates the SABOR / LERA closed-sale data behind every market update on this site himself, rather than reprinting an aggregator's figure. He can be reached at (210) 882-8583.

This page is market information, not financial advice. I am a REALTOR, not a financial advisor or a lender. Loan eligibility, rates and overlays are set by your lender and by the VA, and should be confirmed with them directly.