Finding The Best San Antonio Suburbs for Your Family

Are you searching for the BEST San Antonio Suburbs for your family?

If you’re moving to San Antonio this year, this is no doubt one of your biggest priorities!

Narrowing Down the Options for San Antonio Suburbs

I’m going to walk you through my process in helping my clients that are moving to San Antonio. I’ll also show you how we can narrow down your options of the best San Antonio suburbs for your family, as quickly and efficiently as possible.

Plus, we will take a look at some of the more popular San Antonio suburbs for families that are moving to San Antonio, TX.

San Antonio Relocation Consultation

Here is the scenario that I hear from most people when we first talk about their move to San Antonio:

“We started researching where to live in San Antonio. There are hundreds of videos about neighborhoods & suburbs! We saw all kinds of gorgeous homes and beautiful communities. Now we have a huge list of possible suburbs that we love as options! We’re honestly even more overwhelmed than we were when we started.”

If this is you, you’re not alone! It’s easy to fall down the YouTube rabbit hole and be overwhelmed by all of the options of where to live when you move to San Antonio.

Questions to Narrow Down Your Options

When I have my initial conversation with the families that I help, I use very specific questions and processes to be able to help them fine tune their search. It usually turns out that there are really only 3-4 options for them of areas that actually make sense. Sometimes maybe only 1 or 2 options.

Here are the questions that I use to get to know your specific situation, your timelines and your needs and wants.

Do you have a preference for resale or new construction homes?

Knowing this will help weed out several options, especially if you have your heart set on new construction. For example, if you only want, new construction, we can eliminate several of the San Antonio suburbs that are already built out and developed with no new construction options.

This map shows the concentration of new construction is on the Far West Side of San Antonio and in the New Braunfels area.

Why Families are Moving to New Braunfels, TX

I want to highlight this area because New Braunfels is a hotspot for families that are moving to Texas. There are many reasons why families love New Braunfels. Let’s take a look at a few reasons:

New Braunfels has tons of options for brand new homes! There are multiple different builders, both production & custom, a wide variety floor plans, & sales prices for just about every budget. Homes in New Braunfels start in the mid $200k for smaller square footage, starter type homes. And, all the way up to multi million dollar custom homes on acreage.
The location of New Braunfels on a map works out for a lot of people. It is close to both San Antonio and Austin, but it’s still far enough away from both that you definitely don’t feel like you’re living in a large city.
People really fall in love with into New Braunfels because the overall Texas Hill Country vibes and family-oriented lifestyle. There are tons of things to do, and so much to explore. There are numerous community events throughout the year. From Wurstfest, to the Comal County Fair & parade, the historic homes tour, car shows and so many more attractions. There is plenty to do, and these events attract families from all over the state.
New Braunfels is a well-known destination for tourists and locals throughout the summer months. This is because of Schlitterbahn water park and several river and lake access points, camping and tube chutes.
This is a great option families moving to San Antonio because of the highly rated school systems in the New Braunfels area.

How important are school ratings to you?

Schools are important whether you have school aged children or not, because this can affect your home’s resale value. But, if you do have school aged children, what will you be using as measurement for choosing a school district? There are several resources that you can use to research school districts and specific schools. We can rule out certain areas based off of your research.

What type of geography do you prefer?

When moving to Texas, some people want to live where they can see the rolling Texas Hill Country landscape, the greenery & wildlife, and just feel the full Texas experience.

San Antonio Suburbs with Hill Country Views

These areas primarily in the San Antonio suburbs that are just North outside of the city. Suburbs like New Braunfels, Bulverde & Boerne are well-known for this. The suburbs of San Antonio that are further south and east tend to have more of a flat landscape, and more farmscape. You still have areas with beautiful landscape and scenery, it’s just different physically.

Is La Vernia a Suburb of San Antonio?

Let’s take a look at La Vernia, TX. Yes, it is technically a suburb of the San Antonio Metropolitan area. It’s about 25 miles east of downtown San Antonio. This suburb is tiny, and definitely not well-known, so it is often overlooked.

La Vernia could be the perfect option for you and your family if:

You are looking for rural, country living
You want to live near San Antonio, but not inside of the city
Large acreage homesites are a necessity
You prefer custom type homes, rather than tract style homes

A majority of the homes in La Vernia are on 1+ acre homesites. You are definitely getting more home & land for your money compared to what you get in other areas.

What Type of Commute are You Expecting?

If you work from home and this isn’t a concern for you, then we have many more options to choose from! But, if you are going to commute, you definitely don’t want to have to travel from one side of the city to the other in peak traffic times. That can mean adding an hour or more each way. Multiply that by 5 days a week, that’s a lot of unnecessary time in the car and can definitely be frustrating!

If you know which area you will be working in, it’s helpful to use Waze or Google maps to track your time from home to work to see more or less what your commute will be (and you’ll want to make sure to do this at the time that you will be traveling to get a realistic expectation of traffic).

Family Lifestyle in San Antonio Suburbs

Do you have a preference for living in a master planned community? Are you looking for a neighborhood that has tons of amenities and community events? Looking to be close to a golf course? Or maybe you are only looking for a non-HOA community and could care less about neighborhood amenities. Either way, it’s helpful to know how important lifestyle is to your family when moving to San Antonio.

What is your timeline for moving your family to San Antonio?

This is especially if you’re considering a new construction home in San Antonio. If you only have 2-3 months before you need to move in, or maybe even just 1-2 months, we will narrow down to specific builders in certain communities that will actually have inventory available to meet your timeline.

Timeline for Resale Homes

If you’re looking for resale homes, we will be able to narrow down the suburbs by seeing how the resale market is moving in those areas. If not many homes are being listed, and you aren’t interested in the ones that are, this will tell us that we probably need to eliminate this option for you.

We will focus more on areas that you see homes that are matching your interests and where there is more listing activity to make sure that we are able to spend more time on the more realistic options for you.

Historic Suburbs of San Antonio

Are you looking for more rural areas? Suburban? Historic charm? You’ll find the more historic, affluent suburbs like Alamo Heights, Terrell Hills & Olmos Park tucked inside of San Antonio. These 3 suburbs are in North Central San Antonio, very well-known for picturesque, tree-lined streets with really unique mid-century homes.

This area is also zoned for Alamo Heights ISD, which is the highest rated public school district in San Antonio. Downside to this area is that being one of the most prestigious suburbs of San Antonio, the median price is around $765k and many of the homes that you’ll find are well over the $1m price point.

Suburban Areas of San Antonio

If you’re looking for the suburban areas with master planned communities that have schools located inside the community with tons of neighborhood amenities, those are super common in San Antonio area, and easy to find. We will fine tune your search here by mostly price which side of the city you prefer to be close to.

Rural Suburbs of San Antonio

If you’re looking for a more rural suburb, this one is definitely a hidden gem! It is a great option when looking for the best San Antonio suburbs for your family, and it’s one that most people don’t know about.

One of the BEST San Antonio Suburbs for Your Family

Castroville, TX is just west of San Antonio, about 15 -20 minutes from Loop 1604. Here’s what makes it so special – most of the homes on the market in Castroville are either brand new, or at least newer builds. They are custom, luxury finish out, true Texas ranch style homes on huge homesites. Many of them are located in gated, luxury communities, including one that is a gorgeous golf club community.

Another huge benefit to this area that you don’t see from the map is that even though Castroville itself is tiny, and there’s not much inside the town itself, you are within minutes of the outskirts of San Antonio. This area is booming with development and has everything that you need. You really have the best of both worlds in this area with the rural, country environment and still everything that you need in San Antonio within a few minutes drive.

Search for brand new homes in Castroville here.

More Resources for Finding the BEST San Antonio Suburbs for Your Family

Now, we’ve talked about tons of information and ways to narrow down your options and help you decide which San Antonio suburb is best for your family. Of course there are many more suburbs than what I mentioned here.

I have a San Antonio Relocation Guide that you can find in the description to help guide you through this process even more! But, the best way to alleviate some stress for you and make your family’s move much smoother, is for you to reach out to me so that we can get through this process together.