Seven San Antonio Houses Clear the Purchase Test. Not One of Them Works as a Rental.

By Steve Waller · September 18, 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 2,121 listings. Sorted by price per square foot ascending, the cheapest 60 carried forward, and 30 of those could be valued against three or more matched closed sales inside their own subdivision.

One test on each, and it is the same line whether the buyer means to sell the house or keep it: after-repair value times the advance rate, less repairs, less closing costs, equals the maximum purchase price. Run at 70% and at 75%. If that number sits above the asking price the deal finances itself. If it sits below, the difference is cash out of the buyer's pocket at the table, whatever the listing says about potential.

No days-on-market filter and no keyword filter on the marketing language. Value comes from closed sales inside each property's own subdivision, 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, no radius pulls, no blending of neighbouring subdivisions.

Seven clear — and none of them is distressed paper

Seven files clear the test at the asking price, and all seven survive the remarks pass. That is the part worth noticing, and it is not what these screens usually produce. Not one is a short sale, an auction, a fire, a guardianship or a portal listing. They are ordinary sellers and investor specials on cash terms — the plainest inventory we have screened in any Texas market this month.

The spreads are the widest anywhere in the state right now. The best file on the board clears the asking price by a margin of more than half the supportable price, on eight matched closed sales in its own subdivision. Another has been on the market 439 days and still clears at the asking price — which means it clears by a great deal more at a realistic offer.

Bexar also has the best comp coverage of any market in the study. Half of everything carried forward could be valued honestly. In north Texas that figure is 14%. A market where an appraiser can find matched sales is a market where a lender can write a file.

Now run the same houses as rentals

This is where San Antonio stops being a good market and starts being a specific one. Nothing in Bexar County reached 0.60 debt coverage. Not the cheapest file, not the best-evidenced file, not one of them.

The arithmetic is not marginal and it does not turn on which convention you use to measure it. A house with a finished value around $305,000 leases for about $1,500 a month — a 5.9% gross yield. After taxes, insurance, management and maintenance, roughly $3,835 of net income survives against about $19,000 of annual debt service.

Sized the way a rental lender actually sizes it, those incomes support loans of $25,000 to $65,000 — 13% to 35% of value, not 70%. Buying cheaper reduces the capital left in the deal. It does nothing whatever for debt service.

We also screened the listings that already carry a tenant. 124 of them in Bexar County, and the best one we could underwrite reached 0.71. That is the same result we have now found in five Texas markets: a house listed with a tenant already paying is priced off that income, and the yield is in the price before the buyer arrives.

What the remarks changed

None of the following is visible in a search result. All of it is visible in the agent remarks, the property type field or the county record, and each one cost a file its place on the board.

• Somebody else's finished flip, twice. Two houses on the same street from the same seller, both already renovated, both showing 8% to 11% spreads that were not there.
• Square footage that may not be legal. The largest spread of the week rested on a converted one-car garage counted as living space. The whole after-repair value sat on it.
• Income that was never collected. A small multifamily listing advertising a rent roll, every unit vacant. The "rents" were projections conditional on the repairs being done.

The remarks pass is worth more than any filter applied at the start of a screen. Three of this month's disqualifications showed the largest spreads on their boards before anybody read the record.

What a borrower should do with this

• Pick the market to match the exit, not the other way round. A flipper belongs here. A buy-and-hold borrower does not, at any price in this band.
• Expect to write offers. Seven in 30 valued is a real hit rate by the standards of this study, but the discount is not browsable — it is written.
• Ask what an after-repair value is built on before you ask what it is. Three comps, eight comps and forty-eight comps are not the same number with different error bars. If the answer is a radius pull, it is not an after-repair value.
• Reconcile the square footage against the county record before the valuation, not after. A converted garage and a bad scan look identical in a results grid.

One more caveat specific to this market: the San Antonio records reaching us carry a blank tax rate on most single-family listings, so a county-typical 2.5% is assumed where the figure is missing. A point of tax rate is most of a coverage margin — pull it per property before anyone commits to a hold.

The full report, and how to get the next one

This page carries the finding and the method. The property-level report — the files that clear, the files within 20% of clearing, what the agent remarks changed and what was dropped — goes out one to one. Reply to this brief or send a request through the site and I will send the list for this market.

Investors can sign up to receive new reports by email at acp-lending.com/investor-brief. One Texas market a day for the next five business days, and a new screen every week after that.

Sources

• Houston Association of Realtors MLS — Bexar County active listings, closed sales and closed leases, accessed 17 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.

All briefs