City-and county-wide sales data are instructive, but sometimes it’s helpful to focus on a discrete area of Santa Fe. In the case of Las Campanas (the sprawling area northwest of town where a large proportion of Texans have homes), a healthy adjustment and recovery is underway. As our office’s Linda Varela (the real-estate statistical overlord) wrote, “The stats for Las Campanas are not scary.”
A Credit-Driven Slump versus a Rate-Driven Adjustment
Way back in 2010 and 2011, they kinda were scary. This was in the wake of the great financial crisis (portfolio managers call it the GFC). And the GFC was a credit-driven event. We saw a high proportion of homeowners in 2006, 2007, and 2008 qualifying for loans that they should not have been able to get into, and when the slowdown hit, Las Campanas suffered. I remember being here in 2012 and hearing of foreclosures having happened even in the high-end homes in Las Campanas, and indeed, if you look at volumes for 2010, it’s evident in the numbers. 2010 sales volumes were just 52.9% of their 2008 high.
Happily, Las Campanas recovered and is in a strong position; the recent rate-driven adjustment (as opposed to 2010’s credit-driven slump) has been quite modest and driven by different factors.
Annual Las Campanas Home Sales and Prices, including the Year-to-Date through October 11, 2023
The Beginnings of a healthy Bounce
Year-to-date sales volumes through October 11 are already at 60.3% of their total for all of 2021. So with the addition of three months’ worth of sales, the area is on track to surpass last year’s numbers, perhaps hitting levels similar to 2019’s. This milder sales adjustment versus what we see in the rest of the city is likely because in this segment of the market (well over $1MM average price), a large proportion of sales take place on a cash basis.
Given the greater supply in the top end of the market, a bit of a down tick in prices has happened, though it’s modest. Mean sales prices are off 2021 peaks by just 2.4% and the median (the midpoint) off 7.7% of the 2021 peak. This is quite manageable, frankly, and simply reflective of greater liquidity in supply at the top end of the market — a healthy thing.
Leave a Reply