You already know how a DSCR loan works. This page is about the four San Antonio numbers that decide whether your deal actually pencils here — and the city ordinance that can kill a short-term rental deal before underwriting ever sees it.
Combined tax rates inside the City of San Antonio run roughly 2.2% to 2.5% of assessed value depending on your school district. These are the 2025 adopted rates from the Bexar County Tax Assessor-Collector — 2026 rates typically post in September or October.
| Taxing entity | Rate per $100 |
|---|---|
| Bexar County (incl. Road & Flood) | 0.276331 |
| City of San Antonio | 0.541590 |
| Bexar County Hospital District | 0.276235 |
| Alamo Community College District | 0.149150 |
| San Antonio River Authority | 0.018300 |
| Non-school subtotal | 1.261606 |
Add your school district on top. San Antonio ISD and Southwest ISD land you near 2.42% combined. Northside is about 2.27%, North East and Judson about 2.24%, East Central about 2.19%.
Here is the part investors from out of state get wrong: there is no homestead exemption and no 10% appraisal cap on an investment property. Those protections belong to owner-occupants. Your rental is assessed at market and taxed at the full rate. If you are modeling 1.2% because that is what your last market ran, your DSCR is off by enough to fail — on a $280,000 house that is the difference between roughly $280 a month and $565 a month inside your PITIA.
It depends entirely on who you ask, and the spread is wide enough to sink a deal. These are all September 2026 figures for the same city.
| Source | Median | Measures |
|---|---|---|
| Apartment List | $1,123 | New leases |
| RentCafe | $1,263 | Apartments only |
| Zillow ZORI (metro, Feb 2026) | $1,392 | Asking index |
| Zumper | $1,510 | All listings |
| Zillow Rental Manager | $1,600 | All listings |
They disagree because they measure different things. For a single-family DSCR deal the most honest comparable is Zillow's three-bedroom figure: $1,675 a month. By bedroom count that is studio $879, 1BR $949, 2BR $1,250, 3BR $1,675, 4BR $3,046.
And the part nobody selling you a loan leads with: rent is falling here. Apartment List has San Antonio down 4.9% year over year. Zillow's rent index has the metro down 1.6%, the second-largest decline among the fifty largest U.S. metros. Northmarq recorded asking rents falling for a fourth consecutive quarter to a five-year low across all asset classes, and apartment vacancy has gone from 6.9% in early 2022 to roughly 14.9% by Q3 2026.
Underwrite conservatively. Use a real lease or a defensible market rent study, not a pro forma. If your DSCR only clears 1.0 on optimistic rent, it will not clear it on the appraiser's 1007.
Illustration only — not a quote, not an offer. Your actual rate, taxes and insurance will differ.
| Line | Amount |
|---|---|
| Purchase price | $280,000 |
| Down payment, 25% | $70,000 |
| Loan amount | $210,000 |
| Principal & interest (illustrative) | $1,433 |
| Property tax at 2.3% | $537 |
| Insurance | $265 |
| Monthly PITIA | $2,235 |
| Market rent, 3BR | $1,675 |
| DSCR | 0.75 — does not qualify |
That deal fails at a 1.0 minimum. Not because of the rate — because of the tax line and a rent number that has been falling for four quarters. What gets it there is a lower basis, a higher-rent submarket, more money down, or a property that rents above the median for its bedroom count. That is the conversation worth having before you are under contract, not after.
On insurance, budget roughly $2,900 to $3,600 a year for a San Antonio single-family at about $300,000 dwelling coverage. Landlord DP-3 policies price differently from owner-occupied HO-3 and no carrier publishes a San Antonio DP-3 average, so get a real quote rather than modelling a guess.
DSCR lenders will underwrite an STR on AirDNA data or actuals. That is the easy part. What kills San Antonio STR deals is the city ordinance, and it is a zoning and density question, not a lending one.
| Rule | What it means for an investor |
|---|---|
| Type 1 vs Type 2 | Type 1 is owner-occupied and allowed by right with no density limit. Type 2 is everything else — which is essentially every investor-owned STR. |
| Density cap | Type 2 is capped at 12.5% of the blockface in single-family residential. In multifamily, 5 to 7 units gets one permit; 8 or more gets 12.5% of total units. Calculations round down. |
| Zoning | STRs are prohibited outright in C-3, L, I-1 and I-2 districts. |
| Permit cost | Type 1 is $300 for three years. Type 2 is $450 for three years. |
| Not transferable | Buying a property with an active STR permit does not get you the permit. You apply for your own, subject to the cap as it stands that day. |
| Hotel occupancy tax | State 6%, City 9%, Bexar County 1.75% — about 16.75% combined. Each unit needs its own HOT account and you file monthly even at zero. |
| Enforcement | Under the June 2024 amendments, three accrued citations on a property within three years revokes the permit. |
The practical consequence: your deal can be dead on arrival because of what your neighbours already did. If the blockface is at cap you need a Board of Adjustment special exception — $400 with a homestead exemption, $600 without. Check the cap before you go under contract.
Source: City of San Antonio Development Services, governing ordinance 2024-06-13-0433, current as of September 2026, plus the Texas Comptroller for the state hotel tax. Verify with the city before you buy — this is not legal advice.
Median asking rent, Zumper, September 2026. Use these for direction, then pull real comps on the actual street.
| Area | Median asking rent |
|---|---|
| Medina Valley | $1,800 |
| Stone Oak | $1,795 |
| Downtown | $1,792 |
| Southwest San Antonio | $1,695 |
| Tobin Hill | $1,550 |
| Highland Park | $1,300 |
| Dignowity Hill (RentHop) | $1,295 |
| Highland Hills | $1,250 |
| Harvard Place / Eastlawn | $1,195 |
| Riverside | $1,125 |
| Government Hill | $1,100 |
Surrounding towns, same source: Schertz $1,995 (90% of listings are houses), New Braunfels $1,698, Converse $1,695, Alamo Heights $2,459.
One caution: sources disagree sharply at neighbourhood level because they count different things. Zumper has Government Hill at $1,100; RentCafe, counting only managed apartments, has it at $1,576. The cheap-basis plays are on the West and South Sides and the East Side around Dignowity. Alamo Heights and Olmos Park houses look great and cap below 5% — those are appreciation plays, and a DSCR loan is a cash-flow instrument.
Everything above is the honest bear case. Here is the other side.
Supply is collapsing. San Antonio delivered 13,000 to 14,000 apartment units in 2024. CoStar projects about 5,000 in 2026 and roughly 2,000 in 2027. Northmarq forecasts 2026 deliveries down 63% from 2025, with only about 800 units left to come this year. Rents are soft because of a supply wave that has already crested, and the pipeline behind it is thin.
Buyers have leverage. Just under six months of supply, about 82 days on market, and the SABOR board chair saying outright that buyers have time and choice while sellers need to be thoughtful about pricing. Northmarq is also reporting rising distressed and foreclosure activity as properties miss lender thresholds.
Soft rent plus buyer leverage plus a collapsing pipeline is the part of the cycle where basis gets set. You buy the basis now and the rent catches up to it. Most of the deals people bring me right now do not work — but the ones that do are better than anything available here in 2022.
Send me the address and the rent. I will run the real tax rate for that school district, check the STR cap if it matters, and tell you straight whether it clears 1.0 — before you are under contract.
Free, no obligation, no credit pull.