Jason Azar

Welcome!

Click any lot to learn about its appraised price, the year it was built, and the name of the businesses or owner if applicable. You can also use the dropdown menu in the top left-hand corner of the map to view a single type of land use.

data via the Bexar County Appraisal District

San Antonio is experiencing a long-term trend of population growth consistent with that of South-Central Texas, including the rapidly inflating Austin, TX. According to the US Census the population of the City of San Antonio's grew by approximately 26% between 2000 and 2016, and has been projected by ESRI Community Analyst to grow by an additional 88,000 additional residents by 2022. Projections for the city’s population growth in the SA Tomorrow Comprehensive Plan suggest an increase by as many as 1 million people by 2040. Parallel to the rapidly increasing population San Antonio is experiencing broad-based appreciation in housing values. According to Marcus Millichap, a real estate brokerage and data firm, in the 4th quarter of 2017 the average effective rent for multifamily apartments in San Antonio rose year-over-year by 4.5%, with the highest year-over-year increases in Central San Antonio (including downtown) of 10.2%. The National Association of Home Builders/ Wells Fargo Opportunity Index indicates that the median sale price for a home in the Q3 2017 was $216,000, the highest average quarterly sales price in San Antonio since the Index began in 1991. The highest rates of home and rent appreciation are occurring inside Loop 410, and the neighborhoods experiencing double the median rate of appreciation were all clustered near the center city. 

These trends are consistent with the municipal agenda to revitalize downtown and transform San Antonio into one of the nation's top 10 local economies.  Investments in the expansion of the Riverwalk, the Museum Reach to the north and the Mission Reach to the south, have exceeded $380 million. The City of San Antonio and Bexar County have made significant investments in numerous other parks and greenways over the past decade, including Hardberger Park, Salado Creek, Woodlawn Lake, Alazán and Apache Creeks, and San Pedro Creek, among others. The Center City Development Office (CCDO) reports that $46,321,876 in development incentives between 2012 and 2016 leveraged nearly $600 million in private sector real estate investment around downtown. More than $50 million in additional federal and private investment through the Eastside Promise and Choice Neighborhood Fund has flowed into the neighborhoods immediately east of Downtown.

These incentives are deeply entwined with the “Decade of Downtown” agenda, intended to attract private capital and job centers to the downtown core; remaking historically disinvested neighborhoods so as to attract workers from new creative-class professional sectors. To facilitate these transformations, the city created new organizations, passed new ordinances, and developed new policies to attract investment and job centers, the most significant of which has been the Inner City Reinvestment Infill Policy (ICRIP). Created in February of 2010, ICRIP identified large areas inside Loop 410 within which development projects would be eligible for fee waivers, tax abatements, grants, and loans. It is important to note that the ICRIP map and the map of income segregation in San Antonio are virtually the same, meaning the lowest-income neighborhoods are those most incentivized for redevelopment and thus prime for the appearance of rent gaps. Simultaneously, the city created Centro Partnership, a private-public partnership charged with undertaking downtown redevelopment. This was followed in June of 2012 by the creation of the Center City Housing Incentive Program (CCHIP), which updated the incentives offered by ICRIP specifically to encourage the construction of apartments and condos in the central city. Originally inscribing a target zone that covered roughly the original 36 square mile footprint of the city, CCHIP offered low-interest loans to housing developers, along with real property tax reimbursement grants, San Antonio Water Supply (SAWS) fee waivers, and a more streamlined, guaranteed process for accessing incentives.

The effects of such incentives and the accompanying development are striking. Overlaying housing data published in a January of 2018 housing vulnerability study conducted by the National Association of Latino Community Asset Builders on bequest of the City of San Antonio’s Neighborhood and Housing Services Department with the official boundaries of the city’s 2010 ICRIP zones reveals that over 90% of downtown block groups that have experienced the fastest increases in both municipal appraisal value and market defined appreciation values for residential properties fall within pre-2016 ICRIP boundaries.27 For those living within these vulnerable neighborhoods, defined by NALCAB as experiencing change faster than the city as a whole not only in housing costs, but also in median income, percentage of residents with college degrees, and the percentage of non-Hispanic white residents, this change is most immediately realized in rapidly increasing property taxes and rent prices. There is extensive research that demonstrates the connections between housing instability and negative social outcomes in the areas of health, youth educational performance, and economic mobility. From a larger perspective, when the appreciation of real estate values negatively impacts vulnerable populations and affordable housing stock, cities and counties experience social and economic consequences, including constrained economic growth and increased economic segregation. This is especially significant in San Antonio as the city has already been identified as one of the most economically segregated cities in the United States

Above is a map of the census tracts experiencing the fastest rates of home value appreciation; this is the value that the private real estate market assigns to a property. The concentration of the fastest changing tracts immediately to the east of downtown speaks to the significant transformative effect of policies intended to bring investment to downtown neighborhoods. 

Above is a map of the census tracts experiencing the fastest increase in the city's appraisal value of single family homes; this is the value given to a property by the city's tax appraisers office. The concentration of the fastest increasing appraisal values to the north of downtown speaks to the huge impact that the city's "Museum Reach" Riverwalk extension and the Pearl Brewery has had on the near-north neighborhoods.