We Ran 2,105 San Antonio Listings Through the Purchase Test. Two Cleared It.

By Steve Waller · September 11, 2026

What we pulled

Every active single-family listing in Bexar County priced between $80,000 and $300,000, at least 1,000 square feet, built between 1950 and 2010. That is 2,105 listings. Of those, 181 carry a Tenant Occupied disclosure.

Then one test on each, the same test whether the buyer means to flip the house or keep it and rent it: purchase price against 75% of after-repair value, less repairs, less closing costs. If the asking price sits above that number, the difference is cash out of the buyer's pocket at the table. We ran it at 70% as well, because that is where a first-time borrower actually gets funded.

Value came from closed sales inside each property's own subdivision — 842 closed sales across 36 subdivisions, held to within 20% of the subject's square footage and 15 years of its year built. Below three matched sales we report no value at all rather than a wrong one. No ZIP averages anywhere in this.

Two cleared. Four more are a negotiation.

Out of 44 fix/flip candidates carried forward, 25 could be valued honestly. Two clear the test at the seller's asking price at both the 70% and the 75% advance. Four more sit within $20,000 of clearing at 75% — which on a listing that has been sitting is a conversation, not a wall. The rest fail, and most of them fail badly.

The best-evidenced file on the board is not the widest spread. It is a house with 48 matched closed sales behind its value, sitting 120 days on market, roughly $7,000 short at 75%. The widest spread on the board has four comps and needs a finished value fractionally above the best sale its street has produced in twelve months. Those are not the same risk, and a spreadsheet sorted by margin puts them next to each other.

The rental side is worse, and it is worse for a reason

We took the 32 cheapest per square foot of the 181 tenant-occupied listings and comped them. Twenty-two had enough closed sales to value. Every single one misses at both advances. The closest is $53,625 short at 75%.

That is the second Texas market in a row to return the same answer. A house with a paying tenant in it is priced as a finished product, because that is what it is — and a lender advancing against after-repair value is not paying a finished-product price. The occupied listing is not a bad house. It is a house whose seller has already collected the margin.

Run the same properties as fix/rent and the argument flips. At the asking price, four of thirteen with real rent evidence break a 10% gross yield. At the supportable purchase, all thirteen do — yields move from a 7.3%–12.9% band at ask to 11.2%–29.1% at the maximum, and eleven of the thirteen carry debt-service coverage above 1.25. Which is the entire argument for making an offer rather than paying list.

What rent evidence has to be

A Tenant Occupied disclosure records what was true the day the listing was written. It does not say what the house rents for, and it goes stale the moment the tenant leaves. The lease file does both jobs. We matched 426 closed leases back to these streets.

• The subject's own closed lease — same house, real money, a real date. Thirteen properties across the two lists have one.
• Closed leases on the same street, held to within 25% of the subject's square footage.
• The subdivision median — weakest of the three. Where that is all there is, we say so rather than dressing it up as evidence.

Nineteen of the 32 have neither their own lease nor a same-street lease. They are not failures. They are unanswered, and they are left off the ranking rather than handed a number that looks like proof.

Which produces the standing rule: vacancy is not a disqualifier and nothing comes off a list for it. A vacant house with a documented lease from last year is a better-known quantity than an occupied one with no lease on file.

Nineteen properties got no number at all

Fewer than three closed sales in their own subdivision matched on size and vintage. Several carried no usable subdivision name in the first place — entries like "Conv A/S Code", "N/A", and a bare block number. No comp set, no value, no number. We would rather publish a shorter list than a confident one.

Two further rejections are worth more than the passes:

• When the required exit price beats every house on the street, the exit is the risk, not the purchase. One property needs a finished value of $228,184 out of a subdivision whose best sale in twelve months was $212,500. Its purchase gap looks survivable. It is not a deal.
• A low price per square foot often just means the house is oversized for its street. Several large 1989–1994 files are the cheapest per foot on the board and still fail by six figures, because the finished value their size implies is not what the subdivision pays.

One more, and it is the one that catches lenders: a cash-only listing takes financing off the table at purchase no matter how good the arithmetic is. That is a cash buy with a refinance behind it, not a loan file.

Closing costs — both of our boards were wrong

The Houston board assumed 3% of purchase. This one started at 5% with a $7,500 floor. The real schedule is higher than either at the bottom of the range: $10,000 up to a $200,000 purchase, $11,000–$15,000 from $200,000 to $300,000, $18,000–$20,000 from $300,000 to $400,000.

On a $90,000 purchase, 3% is $2,700 and 5% is $4,500 — both roughly half of what it actually costs to close. The numbers above have been re-run on the real schedule. Two properties still clear at both advances, but one of them saw its margin at the 70% advance collapse from $3,447 to $946, which makes it a 75% file in practice rather than a comfortable one.

If a percentage is standing in for your closing costs, it is understating them at the small end, and the small end is where the thin deals live.

How San Antonio reads next to Houston

The value derivation is identical on both boards. What differs is scope: Houston was a tenant-occupied rental pull, so repairs were a make-ready allowance by vintage. San Antonio is a fix/flip pull, so repairs run as a renovation rate per square foot — $50, $42, $32 and $25 by vintage. A turn and a rehab are not the same job and should not carry the same number.

The San Antonio set is also cleaner than Houston's. No short sales, and no properties with interior access denied. One auction file, which needs foundation and roof work the repair band does not carry. Everything else is an ordinary sale.

Two markets, one method, and the same conclusion in both: the deal is not found by searching for the word "investor". It is found by arithmetic, and then by walking the house.

The list itself

The property-level board — MLS numbers, addresses, comp counts, repair allowances and the maximum supportable purchase on each — goes out one to one. If you want it, reply to this or use the Request Financing form and say San Antonio. Tell us whether you are buying to flip or to hold and we will send the version that matches.

Send us an address and we will run the same test on it.

Sources

• Houston Association of Realtors MLS — Bexar County active listings, closed sales and closed leases, accessed 10 September 2026

Market data is from public sources and is provided for information only. Nothing here is an offer of credit, a rate quote, or investment advice. Financing is subject to underwriting, lender approval, appraisal or valuation, title, insurance, property eligibility and program availability.

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