{"id":150922,"date":"2025-08-16T16:26:10","date_gmt":"2025-08-16T16:26:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/150922\/"},"modified":"2025-08-16T16:26:10","modified_gmt":"2025-08-16T16:26:10","slug":"how-san-antonio-and-bexar-county-are-facing-property-value-dips","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/150922\/","title":{"rendered":"How San Antonio and Bexar County are facing property value dips"},"content":{"rendered":"

Property values that were once rising rapidly have slowed dramatically<\/a> from just a few years ago, bringing both the city and the county\u2019s property tax revenues down with it.<\/p>\n

While that dynamic is now forcing San Antonio into a budget crunch, Bexar County isn\u2019t feeling the same pain because rapid new development is more than making up for the losses.<\/p>\n

All across Texas, long-established municipalities find themselves hurting for cash<\/a> this budget season as fast-growing communities continue to bring in more than money than previous years.<\/p>\n

Such contrasting financial outlooks were on full display as San Antonio and Bexar County leaders each presented their budget proposals for the 2025-2026 fiscal year this year \u2014 including, for the first time in recent memory, a decrease in revenue from property taxes on existing structures.<\/p>\n

\u201cExisting properties from last year, their net appraisals went down,\u201d County Manager David Smith said in a recent interview with the San Antonio Report.<\/p>\n

But when new development is accounted for, the city estimated its total property tax revenue will be about .1% higher than the 2025 fiscal year \u2014 about $844,000 in a roughly $4 billion budget proposal<\/a> that includes revenue from other sources.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile in the county, total property tax revenue is expected to come in about 2.2% higher than the previous year, or about $13.3 million in an overall $2.8 billion budget<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cAll these new subdivisions, they\u2019re out in the county,\u201d Smith of the disparate financial outlooks. \u201cThe city\u2019s basically built. That\u2019s what\u2019s different for us.\u201d<\/p>\n

Trending negative<\/p>\n

The City of San Antonio has many other revenue sources beyond property taxes \u2014 including sales tax, a bond program, permitting fees and money it receives from a profit-sharing model with CPS Energy.<\/p>\n

But when early projections showed<\/a> this year\u2019s property tax revenue growing more slowly than expected, City Manager Erik Walsh warned that spending cuts were inevitable to prevent a relatively small deficit from ballooning to roughly $150 million<\/a> by 2027.<\/p>\n

By the time city staff made its formal presentation on Thursday, the outlook was even worse.<\/p>\n

Property taxes from existing structures were in the red, down .9% from the previous fiscal year, and projected to drop another 1.1% in 2027. <\/p>\n

The result was a city budget proposal that<\/a> called for cutting staff positions, scaling back employee raises and increasing parking ticket fees<\/a> \u2014 among other changes \u2014 to balance the budget. <\/p>\n

City departments were even asked to compose plans for across-the-board cuts, in case further reductions are needed throughout the year. <\/p>\n

\u201cWhat\u2019s compounding it is, we\u2019re going negative,\u201d Walsh said of the property tax revenue. <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

While new construction kept the city\u2019s overall taxable values in the positive this year, Walsh said that revenue looks less reliable in the future.<\/p>\n

Residential building permits were down about 16% in 2025, and commercial building permits were down about 10%, Walsh told the council, citing economic uncertainty, tariff conversations and interest rates as potential causes.<\/p>\n

\u201cBuilding permits are one of our early warning indicators,\u201d Walsh said. \u201cWith permitting being down this year and not anticipated to change only marginally going into 2026, those are likely to be pressures we see in future taxable values going forward.\u201d<\/p>\n

Michael Berlanga, a San Antonio real estate and tax consultant who has a business helping people challenge their property valuations, said that outlook should give the city some pause as it considers borrowing money for big projects down the line.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you\u2019re not growing, you might be dying,\u201d Berlanga said. \u201cGrowing enables us to leverage our future, and when we go through periods of slow growth or no growth, then we have to revisit how far into the future do we want to leverage the presumption of growth?\u201d<\/p>\n

A fast-growing county<\/p>\n

In years of fast-growing<\/a> property values, municipalities didn\u2019t get to keep all of the additional revenue because the state caps the amount<\/a> of property taxes they can collect on existing properties at 3.5% growth over the previous year.<\/p>\n

That cap forced both San Antonio and Bexar County to lower their tax rates and create new tax exemptions<\/a> to stay within the state\u2019s limit \u2014 and neither has been eager to reverse course on such popular programs even now that values have dipped.<\/p>\n

While San Antonio is making big cuts to avoid a tax rate increase, the situation is different in Bexar County, which includes all of San Antonio, as well dozens of other smaller cities and towns, plus unincorporated territory, within its taxing jurisdiction.<\/p>\n

This week Smith presented a budget that calls for 70 new employees<\/a> at the jail, 22 new patrol officers in the Sheriff\u2019s Office, and a major investment in equipment to manage flash flooding<\/a> on the roads. <\/p>\n

That all without making major spending reductions, and while keeping the tax rate even from the previous year.<\/p>\n

Smith said he\u2019s able to do it because roughly $6.8 billion in new development was added to the county\u2019s taxable values this year.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe got that new construction, which gave us some growth,\u201d Smith said. <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

County leaders are still approaching this budget season with caution \u2014 thanks to looming federal policy decisions that could leave local agencies scrambling to make up for cuts to Medicaid and SNAP benefits. <\/p>\n

At the same time, the county still has to decide whether to continue a number of programs it started using federal pandemic relief, which is poised to create a fiscal \u201ccliff\u201d<\/a> when it dries up.<\/p>\n

Smith said Wednesday that the county was still three to four years out from that scenario.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe still need to make annual adjustments to make sure that we adequately address that,\u201d Smith said. \u201cAnd of course, it partially depends on how much of the [pandemic era projects] that they want to continue to fund.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Property values that were once rising rapidly have slowed dramatically from just a few years ago, bringing both…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":150923,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5133],"tags":[88591,27145,5229,14953,88592,27146,53773,11189,7202,7203,358,7453,3187,7815,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-150922","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-san-antonio","8":"tag-2025-2026-bexar-county-budget","9":"tag-2025-2026-san-antonio-city-budget","10":"tag-america","11":"tag-bexar-county-commissioners-court","12":"tag-david-smith","13":"tag-erik-walsh","14":"tag-peter-sakai","15":"tag-property-tax","16":"tag-san-antonio","17":"tag-sanantonio","18":"tag-texas","19":"tag-top-story","20":"tag-tx","21":"tag-typedaily","22":"tag-united-states","23":"tag-united-states-of-america","24":"tag-unitedstates","25":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","26":"tag-us","27":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/150922","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=150922"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/150922\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/150923"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=150922"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=150922"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=150922"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}