El Paso Housing Market November 2026: Prices Stopped Rising (Here's the Real Number)

El Paso Housing Market November 2026: Prices Stopped Rising (Here's the Real Number)

Home prices in El Paso stopped going up in June. Now, they haven't gone down, they just stopped. That's basically the whole video right there. So, flat, slower, and almost half the sellers out there

have already dropped their price. So, stay to the end because we're gonna show you what a house bought in 2021 is worth today, and trust me, it is insane.

I'm John Peña, this is Alejandro Sosa, and if you'd rather basically skip the video and just talk to us, our phone numbers are right there on the screen for you.

If you only have 30 seconds, here's what the October data means for you. If you're buying, rates are up a full point from a year ago, and that definitely hurts, but prices have stopped climbing,

and for the first time in a couple of years, you actually have some room to negotiate. If you're selling your house, look at what sold on your street back in April and May, okay?

That's the most your house will get right now, not the least. Price right there or a little under, and it will likely sell.

Price above that, and you join the 42% of homeowners that have already had to cut their prices, okay? So, that's the short version, here's the why. All right, let's start with the crazy part

because it definitely kind of explains everything else. This is insane. So, say you bought a $300,000 house in El Paso in the spring of 2021.

Nothing special, just an average house that did what the El Paso average did. Today, that house is worth about $444,000, okay? Now, if you remember back in 2021,

the things were essentially insane. Like, so many people could get approved for a home loan because the interest rates, because of COVID, were down to like three and even below three,

even 2.5 we were seeing sometimes. So, what that meant is that so many people could get approved for a home, everybody wanted to buy a home,

and so there was basically a run on the inventory and homes were basically getting multiple offers, like first day active, right? People were covering appraisal gaps,

meaning if a home only appraised for 300,000 and they were under contract for the house for like 275, they were like, fine, I'll cover that extra to 25,000. It was insane, okay?

So, this is not that time, but 2021 was crazy. So, anyway, that 2021 house that sold for $300,000 and is now worth 440,000, that works out to about 8% appreciation every year, okay?

The norm for El Paso going back decades is about 3% a year. So, this was not a normal time, all right? But if you look at where it came from, basically that first year alone, 2021,

that house went up almost 20% appreciation. The next year, 10%, then 5.7%, then 3.2%, then 2.2%, right? So, every year was coming down. So, every single year the gain got smaller

and that first year was bigger than the last three years put together. And since this June of 2026, it's basically been zero. So, if you bought in 2021 or earlier, congratulations,

because basically you caught the whole run. But if you're buying now, do not expect that to happen again anytime soon. So, why did it stop?

Why did appreciation recently, why did prices go flat? Alejandro's got the first reason, and it's one that basically everybody probably knows. Yeah, so the first reason is gonna be,

I mean, interest rates, right? That's what everybody asks us about. The 30-year fix is sitting at 7.24%, and that's the Freddie Mac server from this week.

A year ago, we were sitting at 6.17%. So, basically a full point higher than last fall. And a full point is a lot more than it actually sounds like. Now, here's what the actual point looks

and actually does to you. Take a $295,000 loan, and I'm not talking about the whole thing, I'm just talking about the loan part here.

No taxes, no insurance, just paying the bank back the principal and interest. At a last year's rate, that's about $1,800 a month. This year's rate is about $2,000.

So, it's about $200 more a month, every single month. And that house didn't change at all. So, there's a saying that people say, marry the house, date the rate.

So, if you're in a position that you really have to purchase a home, find a home, you can always, in a couple years, when things maybe change a little bit,

you can always refinance. So, it's a good option. Okay, the second reason is the price tag itself. Basically, that 2021 house went up almost 50%,

and the rate on the loan went from about 3% back then to over 7% today. So, the house costs more, and the money to buy it costs more,

and buyers have basically kind of finally hit their limit. So, you can see it in the numbers here, just not in the one that everybody quotes. So, real quick vocab lesson here.

The median, okay? The median, that's the middle house if you line up every sale from the cheapest to the most expensive.

Last month, that came in at basically just under $293,000. Now, that's all up almost 6% from last October, and nationally, prices are only up about 1%. So, that sounds great, right?

Here's the problem with that median number. It depends on which house is sold. So, if more big, like Westside houses close this month, and fewer small ones, the middle slides up,

and nobody's house actually really got more valuable, and that's exactly, by the way, what happened in September, when the median jumped to just over $300,000

for like a month, and then came right back down. So, here's the actual number that we trust. Take every resale house that sold, divide the price by the square footage,

and look at the middle one, and that's price per square foot. It doesn't care whether it was big houses, small houses that sold that month.

In January of last year, it was $148 price per square foot. It climbed all the way to $157 by this June, but since June, it's been sitting right there

at 156 square foot. It stopped, okay? So, I've got a story on basically, Alejandro and I were talking before this,

and we were like, man, home prices in El Paso, in America for the most part, have gradually been going up, up, up, up, and up. But, we have finally stalled out here.

And so, a couple of months ago, I had a seller reach out to me. They wanted to know a price opinion on their home. We based it off the last six months of data.

So, it was capturing all of the closings this year that were in like April, May, June, right? And it was looking pretty good. However, he wasn't ready to sell.

He had to make some repairs on the home. Now, he's ready to go. And so, we re-ran those numbers, and all of those, we only look back six months,

because that's what the appraisers are gonna do. April and May, like those numbers are starting to fall off. And really, now the new numbers are the June, July, August, September, October numbers.

And those have flattened out. And moral of the story is, you know, a couple months ago, his home was worth this much. And now, based off the new numbers, it's worth less, okay?

So, now, home prices are still up on the year, about 3.7%, but all of that happened before June. So, when somebody tells you El Paso prices are up 6% or something, that's the median talking.

The square foot says, basically, the run-up is over, all right? So, remember, real estate is a roller coaster with ups and downs, okay?

This recurring cycle is inevitable. American home prices have been climbing for quite a long time, and it's very possible that this roller coaster is at the top of the ride.

Now, El Paso is in one market. So, all seven areas are on your screen. I'll just hit the highlights. First, the west side is the one place

that is pretty much still going up, $188 a square foot, and that's up almost 5% since June. The east side, around Cielo Vista, is holding. Sellers are keeping about 97% of what they asked.

Now, the northeast, it's pretty much cooled off, for the most part. It's sitting at $142 a square foot, which is down almost 6% since June.

Horizon City and Socorro still have, you know, more sales than anywhere else in the city, but the resale sellers out there, they kept about 95.4% of the first price,

and that's the lowest we've ever measured here. Now, here's the number for the whole city. Resale sellers got 96.5% of what they first asked for. In June, that was 97.6.

So, every month since June, sellers have been giving back a little more. If you're selling a regular resale house, plan on about 3.5% under your first number.

John's got the calendar and his read on winter. So, fall home sales typically decline, and winter is usually the slowest time of year for residential home sales.

So, last year, prices went from 151 a square foot in October to 151 in December, so the fall slowed everything down, but it didn't knock prices down.

Here's what's different this year, though. Rates are a full point higher. There are 19% fewer homes for sale than last October, and the price cut started in June

instead of October. So, the slowdown basically got here early, and it got here with higher rates. So, here's my read.

I don't think we see a big drop because there just aren't enough homes for sale for that to happen. What I think we see is flat prices through the winter,

maybe a little soft, with sellers giving back a little more each month until if rates move. But Fannie Mae's October forecast

has rates at about 7.4% all the way through next year. So, I know a lot of buyers are waiting for home prices to come down. Here's the problem with that.

Our country, unfortunately, doesn't have enough houses, right? If there were way more homes for sale than people who want them,

yeah, sure, prices could drop hard because sellers would have to basically fight for those buyers. That's not where we are, right?

There are still way more people who want a house than houses to buy. So, prices stay flat, maybe slip a little, but unfortunately, for buyers at least,

a big drop just isn't coming. So, here's a ask. If you own a home in El Paso and you're even thinking about selling

in the next six months, the most expensive mistake you can make this winter is pricing off the spring home sales. Almost half of the houses sitting on the market right now

have already had to cut their prices. And every one of those sellers, they lost weeks and money finding out honestly just the hard way.

We go through every single resale closing in this city by hand every month, we're the ones telling you that it's flat, where a lot of people, pretty much everybody else

is still telling you that it's going up. So, before you list, let's sit at your kitchen table and go through what your street actually sold for. No charge, no contract,

and if the honest answer is just to wait, we'll tell you to wait. And if you're buying, this is actually the first winter in two years

where you got some leverage. So, you want somebody on your site who knows what the house is worth, not what it's listed at.

So, call us, text us, our numbers are on the screen, or go to penalpaso.com, put your address in there, and the real read on your house comes from this same data. And if you'd rather do all of this in Spanish, I got you.

All right, so basically, that's kind of the November market update for El Paso. Try to do this every first week of every month. So, subscribe and catch December

because that's definitely when the market may kind of show its hand. So, with all that, a little jibber jabber here. You recently got back from a trip.

What were you up to? I actually went to Oaxaca. I've never been there. They have the Dead Celebration.

Apparently, it's one of the biggest places to go. It was amazing. I mean, parades, food, the food, I can't even explain how good the food is.

A lot more affordable than even El Paso. The people are super nice. The weather was amazing. Spending time with the family,

it was one of the best trips I've taken. That's awesome. Mine was not quite as awesome. A couple days ago, I've decided,

I've always been into camping and backpacking, but I wanted to transition from camping in a tent to hammock camping, basically. So, you don't take a tent, you just take a hammock.

And so, I went up to Cloudcroft, which is obviously much higher elevation. And I hiked in a couple of miles and set up the hammock and all the stuff,

which was totally fine, but it got down to basically in the 20s. And so, it was pretty cold, but it was still okay. I don't know, sometimes I like to,

Leah and I joke that I have to induce my own suffering because I'm pretty healthy, whereas she's always suffering because she isn't that healthy.

So, I have to create my own suffering. So, anyway, thank you guys so much for watching. We'll see you in the next one.