How to Run Your Own CMA on a San Antonio Home Using SABOR Stats and BCAD Data

A comparative market analysis is not a magic spreadsheet. It is a defensible opinion of value built from three things: recent closed sales of similar homes, current active competition, and honest adjustments for the ways your house differs from each comp. You can build one yourself in an afternoon, but Texas makes it harder than Zillow-centric tutorials admit. Here is how to do it correctly in Bexar County.

Why a Texas DIY CMA is harder than in most states

Texas is a non-disclosure state. Sale prices are not recorded in the public deed and the Bexar Central Appraisal District (BCAD) does not publish them. That is the single biggest reason homeowners who run their own numbers end up off — they pull what they think are comps from BCAD or the county clerk and find only the appraised value, which is a mass-appraisal model number, not a sale price.

That means a DIY CMA in San Antonio depends on two sources working together: SABOR-fed public listing sites (Realtor.com, Redfin, HAR.com) for sold prices, and BCAD for the hard property characteristics — year built, living area, lot size, additions, pool, garage conversions.

The three data layers you actually need

• Subject property profile — every specification of your own house, pulled from BCAD and verified against reality.
• Closed sales in the last 90–180 days — the comps. These drive value.
• Active and pending listings — your competition today. These tell you whether the market is moving up, flat, or softening since those closings.

If you skip the active layer, you price to a market that may no longer exist. This matters right now in several San Antonio submarkets where inventory has climbed and 2022 comps are no longer predictive.

Step 1: Pull your subject property from BCAD

Go to BCAD's public property search and pull your own record first. You need:

• Year built and any recorded additions (the "Improvement" table shows year and square footage of each addition separately)
• Living area square footage — note this is BCAD's measured area, which sometimes differs from MLS-reported area
• Lot size in square feet or acres
• Bedroom and bath count (BCAD is often wrong on baths — verify against your own home)
• Garage type and size, pool, covered patio, outbuildings
• Legal description and subdivision name — you will use the subdivision name to find comps

Write all of this down. This is your comp card.

Step 2: Define your comp radius the right way

The correct comp radius is not a distance in miles. It is the smallest area that contains at least 3–5 recent closed sales of houses like yours. In San Antonio that usually means:

• Inside a named subdivision for tract neighborhoods — Stone Oak communities, Alamo Ranch, Westcreek, Redbird Ranch, Rogers Ranch. Stay inside the subdivision even if a closer sale sits across the arterial, because HOA, builder, and floor plan sets change at the subdivision line.
• Inside the ISD boundary for older inner-loop neighborhoods where schools drive value — an Alamo Heights ISD house (78209) does not comp to a San Antonio ISD house three blocks away, even if the homes look identical.
• Inside the municipal boundary for independent cities — Alamo Heights, Olmos Park, Terrell Hills, Shavano Park, Hollywood Park, Castle Hills, Leon Valley, and Windcrest each have their own tax and service profiles.
• Inside the same flood or floodplain status along the creeks — Salado, Leon, Olmos, and Cibolo creek frontages carry insurance consequences that will cut a comp's value by real money.

Step 3: Find the sold prices

Without a SABOR MLS login you cannot query the MLS directly. The workarounds:

• Realtor.com pulls directly from SABOR's feed and displays sold prices and sold dates for most SABOR listings going back several years. This is the best free source in San Antonio.
• Redfin shows sold data but its coverage in SA is thinner than in coastal markets.
• HAR.com (Houston Association of Realtors) surprisingly carries a lot of SABOR sold data through its statewide reach.
• SABOR's public market reports (sabor.com) give you monthly medians by ZIP and price band — useful for the trend overlay, not for individual comps.

Filter for closed status, sold within the last 180 days, similar living area (within ~15%), similar age, and same subdivision or ISD. Aim for 3–5 strong comps and 2–3 active listings.

Step 4: Make adjustments, not averages

Averaging five sold prices is not a CMA. You have to adjust each comp toward your subject. The defensible rule set:

• Living area: adjust at roughly 60–70% of the neighborhood's price-per-square-foot, not 100%. A 2,400 sq ft house is not worth 20% more than a 2,000 sq ft house in the same block.
• Lot size: only adjust meaningfully when lots differ by 25%+ or when one has usable acreage (Helotes, Boerne, far west NISD).
• Condition and updates: kitchen and primary bath renovations move the needle; repainted walls do not. Be honest about your own house.
• Pool: in SA's climate, recovery is roughly 40–60% of installed cost on resale, and only in neighborhoods where buyers expect one.
• Garage conversions: most buyers and lenders will discount converted garage square footage. Do not count it at full living-area value.
• Time: if the market moved between the comp's close date and today, adjust. SABOR's monthly medians give you the signal.

Put this in a grid. Subject column, five comp columns, a row per adjustment, a net adjustment, and an adjusted sale price. Your value opinion is the tight cluster of adjusted prices — not the raw average.

What most people get wrong

• Using BCAD appraised value as a comp. It is a mass-appraisal model, trails the market by 12–18 months, and is explicitly not a market value opinion. BCAD itself says so. Use BCAD for characteristics only.
• Comping across ISD or municipal lines. A house in 78232 zoned to NEISD does not comp to a house two miles away zoned to Judson ISD, regardless of how similar the buildings look.
• Ignoring the active layer. Closed sales tell you where the market was. Active and pending listings tell you where it is. If three similar homes are sitting unsold at your target price, your target price is wrong.
• Trusting the Zestimate or Redfin Estimate as a tiebreaker. These are automated valuation models that cannot see your condition, your updates, or your lot's flood status. They are a starting question, not an answer.
• Over-adjusting for square footage. Dollar-per-square-foot is a reporting metric, not a valuation method. A bigger house in the same neighborhood has a lower $/sf — that is normal, not a signal.
• Skipping the drive-by. Spend an hour actually looking at your top three comps from the street. Photos lie. A comp backing to Loop 1604 is not the same product as yours backing to a greenbelt.

When to stop doing it yourself

A DIY CMA is enough to price a rental, set a reasonable FSBO list price in a tract neighborhood with deep comp sets, or sanity-check an agent's proposal. It is not enough when your house is unusual — a custom build, an acreage property outside Loop 1604, a historic home in King William or Monte Vista, or anything with significant deferred maintenance. In those cases a licensed Texas appraiser (not just an agent's CMA) will pay for itself, especially if you are setting price for a divorce, estate, or tax protest at the BCAD ARB.

If you want to see what actual San Antonio homes are listed at right now for your active-comp layer, browse current listings at /rentals and for-sale inventory across Bexar County on RentInSA, or list your home FSBO at /list-your-home once your number is set. When the house is complicated enough that a clean comp set does not exist, find a local agent at /agents who works your specific submarket.