Austin homebuyers look to San Antonio for more affordable options

Even though prices there have increased by at least 38%, San Antonio in attracting more and more buyers from the even pricier state capital

Redfin's Chelsea Knox (Redfin, iStock)
Redfin's Chelsea Knox (Redfin, iStock)

Austin homebuyers are heading south-by-southwest to find more options, with more and more moving to San Antonio, and specifically Alamo County.

Despite San Antonio house prices increasing by 38%, priced-out Austinites are increasingly eyeing the Alamo City when it comes to finding a new place to live.

The number of people looking to relocate who searched in San Antonio almost doubled in 2022, My San Antonio reports, with most of those searches coming from people in Austin. A recent report from Redfin shows this may be due to prices in the Texas capitol rising to even more eye-watering levels than in San Antonio. In short, though both cities are seeing prices go up, San Antonio is simply the more affordable option.

“In Austin, $300,000 will buy you a two-bedroom condo with less than 1,000 square feet,” said San Antonio Redfin agent Chelsea Knox in a news release. “In San Antonio, you can get a beautiful four-bedroom, 3,000-square-foot home for the same price.”

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Even after recent increases, the median home price in San Antonio is still sitting at around $330,000 — more than $200,000 less than in Austin. The gap between Austin and San Antonio home prices grew over the pandemic, with a typical Austin home selling for $555,000 in April 2022, which is up 19 percent year over year according to Redfin.

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The number of people looking to move to Austin dropped to around 3,000 this year, a drastic decrease from the 11,000 pouring in during 2021, according to My San Antonio. Austin no longer ranks on Redfin’s list of most popular migration destinations, but San Antonio already has over 6,300 people looking to move there in 2022 so far.

Redfin users looking to move to San Antonio from Austin is up at least 10 percent from a year ago, according to the report, while 16 percent of homebuyers leaving Austin are moving to San Antonio, up from 14 percent in 2021.

But the forces driving the migration may not continue indefinitely.

In the wake of higher interest rates, the housing market in the state capital is starting to cool down — 16 percent of Austin home sellers dropped their asking price in April, up from 9 percent a year ago, and Austin’s April home sales were down 13 percent year over year.

[My San Antonio] — James Bell