Two homes sit three blocks apart. Both closed last spring. One went from contract to keys in forty days. The other took nine months, most of it spent waiting on a set of stamped plans that had to be redrawn twice. The lots looked identical from the curb. The zip code was the same. What separated them was a document most buyers never open before they write an offer.
That document is the Terrell Hills Code of Ordinances, and it is the quiet engine behind almost everything a buyer notices about this small city: the preserved rooflines, the thin inventory, the wide gap between what one median number and another median number seem to say about price.
Terrell Hills Is Its Own City, and the Permit Desk Proves It
Alamo Heights buyers cross into Terrell Hills so casually that many owners still think of the two as one address on paper. They are not. Terrell Hills is an incorporated municipality with its own city hall at 5100 N New Braunfels Avenue, its own building official, and its own permit portal.
