San Antonio Is the Up coming Warm Spot to Acquire Houses

  • Genuine-estate investors glimpse for spots where they can get lower, renovate, then promote large or lease out.
  • San Antonio’s worth and big-town perks make it a attractive position to flip properties, one investor explained.
  • Flipper and landlord John Crenshaw breaks down why he’s concentrating on Texas’ 2nd-biggest metropolis.

Austin serious-estate investor John Crenshaw said he only labored for someone else after. 

For a brief spell, when he was 17 years old, he labored at a department of H-E-B, the common Texas grocery store. Right after that, he turned his enthusiasm for gaming into a thriving resale business enterprise by repairing up and reselling damaged Xbox and Playstation consoles.

Now 27, Crenshaw has refocused his attempts from video games to actual estate. Last calendar year, the youthful investor acquired 7 homes about Austin — generally in Killeen, a rapidly-developing northern suburb. He renovated and offered a few houses for a gain and then held the rest as dollars-flowing rentals. Crenshaw has acquired ample working experience and acquired enough return on his investment flipping houses to start tackling an $800,000 new-residence design venture in a nearby region termed Harker Heights.

Following a remarkable bull operate for the duration of the pandemic, the Austin marketplace is ultimately beginning to interesting off. Even so, despite residence prices dipping from their 2022 peak, homebuying in the Texas capital proceeds to be aggressive and primarily demanding for shoppers on a tight price range. For this motive, Crenshaw sees a ton of option in close by San Antonio for newbies and professional buyers alike.

Here are just a handful of causes why he is bullish on Texas’ next-largest metropolis. 

It really is shut to Austin

Downtown San Antonio is about a 75-mile, or 90-minute, push from downtown Austin, making it practical for Austin-spot genuine estate buyers who really don’t want to undertaking way too far.

The two are poised to develop into inherently connected, Crenshaw instructed, comparable to other twin cities these as Dallas-Fort Well worth, Raleigh-Durham, and Minneapolis-St. Paul.

aerial view of San Antonio, Texas

San Antonio.

Allan Baxter/Getty Visuals



“If you seem at the map, every single metropolis on the outskirts of Austin and outskirts of San Antonio are little by little starting off to establish up and populations are exploding,” Crenshaw stated, especially highlighting progress in sites that lie on the highway in between the two metropolitan areas like Kyle, Buda, and San Marcos. “I’ve experienced buyers notify me about how they bought land down there for pennies on the dollar, but now those people metropolitan areas have blown up.”

You can purchase homes for rather cheap 

“A good deal of men and women have overlooked San Antonio,” Crenshaw stated.

Even though Austin has gained a lot more awareness from tech and remote staff, he added, San Antonio’s instant is at last arriving. 

A main attraction is its relative affordability in contrast to Austin. January information from Redfin pegs the median house price in San Antonio at $255,000, which is fewer than 50 % of Austin’s $530,000.

Investors can even expect to decide on up homes for considerably a lot less, Crenshaw said, introducing that derelict residences in San Antonio can be purchased for $100,000 or more affordable. Investors who rehab the homes properly can resell them for up to $300,000 or extra, he explained.

San Antonio’s downtown is undergoing a renaissance

Crenshaw pointed to San Antonio’s River Walk, a 15-mile waterway that cuts by way of the coronary heart of the city, and the slew of new restaurants and breweries along it as a main draw for the two new people and serious-estate investors. 

San Antonio River Walk

River Walk in San Antonio.

CrackerClips / iStock



In distinct, the city’s Pearl District — a compact neighborhood with historic buildings and new higher-rises that also serves as an arts and enjoyment district — is an place worth viewing, Crenshaw claimed. 

“The Pearl is not just a hang-out location, but an actual location,” Crenshaw defined. “That standard place has doubled — if not tripled — [in price] in the last five or 6 years.”

San Antonio — the swiftest-increasing large city in the country among 2020 and 2021, gaining approximately 14,000 individuals, for every census information — stays eye-catching to newcomers. Relocators get affordability in San Antonio, Crenshaw reported, devoid of sacrificing thrilling nightlife and other big-city attractions these kinds of as museums and expert sports activities groups like the NBA’s Spurs.