In a case documented by the San Antonio Report in the spring of 2024, a house on Claudia Street had holes in its shingled roof, a foundation that had started to sag, and no residents besides a rotation of vultures the year before it sold. Scott and Hoda Cummings bought it anyway, in the kind of shape where the county's own tax record still carried the pre-repair appraisal of $325,000. By the time they finished the restoration that January, the 1900 house was ready to list for just under a million dollars, with a new roof, rebuilt electrical and plumbing, and a foundation that no longer moved.
What made the math work wasn't only the sale price. The Cummingses had applied for a city program that freezes municipal property taxes on the house at that pre-rehab value for years after the work is done. Whoever buys a fully restored King William home like this one isn't just buying finished materials. In many cases, they're buying someone else's tax clock, already running, with a set number of years left on it. That detail rarely makes it onto a flyer or a listing description, and it's worth understanding before you compare a King William asking price to a similar historic home somewhere else.
The Program Behind the Premium
San Antonio's Office of Historic Preservation has offered a substantial rehabilitation tax incentive since 2002. It applies to designated landmarks and properties inside local historic districts, which covers most of King William. To qualify, a rehab has to be real: the city requires the estimated cost of improvements to reach 30 percent of the property's assessed value before a project counts as substantial.
Once a project is verified, an owner can choose between two structures. Both cap out at ten years of relief on city property taxes only, not the county, school district, or other taxing entities that also appear on a Bexar County tax bill.
| Track | How it works | Total duration |
|---|---|---|
| Ten-year freeze | City taxable value locked at the pre-rehab assessed value | 10 years |
| Five-zero, five-fifty | No city taxes owed for 5 years, then city taxes assessed at 50% of the post-rehab appraisal | 10 years |
The Office of Historic Preservation processes the applications, and the Historic and Design Review Commission certifies that the completed work meets the standard before Bexar County's appraisal district applies the exemption. According to reporting on the program, the average participating homeowner saves about $4,800 a year in city property taxes, and city staff had verified properties in 13 different zip codes across San Antonio as of the most recent public count. You can read the qualification language directly in the city's historic preservation ordinance or on the city's own incentives page.
The detail that changes how a buyer should read a King William listing is this: the exemption stays with the property when it sells. That change was made roughly a decade into the program's history, which means a rehab completed years ago by a previous owner can still be quietly reducing the city tax bill of whoever buys the house today.
"It's really a nice way to help reward a property owner for making that investment and being a good steward of our historic properties," Shanon Shea Miller, director of the city's Office of Historic Preservation, has said of the program. "We always want more and more people to take advantage of it."
What This Looks Like in This Year's Numbers
King William's housing stock, most of it built between 1870 and 1920, is about as well suited to this incentive as any inventory in the city. That also means the neighborhood's headline market numbers this year need a second look before anyone treats them as a simple story about demand.
Over the three months ending in May 2026, King William's median sale price ran $730,000, up 60.4 percent from the same window a year earlier. In the same stretch, homes sat on the market for an average of 260 days, nearly double the 135 days recorded the year before. Only nine homes sold in the neighborhood that May. For comparison, Bexar County as a whole was running a median sale price closer to $304,000 with sellers spending roughly 79 days on market as of early August 2026, a far more typical and far more liquid market than King William's.
That combination, sharply higher median price alongside sharply longer time on market, on a handful of transactions, is what a thin market with a wide condition spread looks like. A neighborhood where one or two fully restored, tax-incentive-backed sales close at a premium can pull the median a long way up in the same window that older, unrenovated stock sits waiting for a buyer willing to take on the work. The number isn't wrong. It's just describing two different products under one roof: the finished historic home with a running tax clock, and the project house without one.
An Investor Who Does This on Purpose
Elaine Lutton has remodeled 50 historic homes over the last 20 years and first applied for the substantial rehabilitation incentive in 2017. She's described the first application as a little time-consuming but worth it, and she's since applied the same approach in Monte Vista, restoring an early 20th century house largely with her own labor. Her pattern is instructive for anyone evaluating a listing: professional restorers price the tax incentive into their math from the start, because it changes what a rehab needs to earn back at resale. A buyer comparing two similarly priced historic homes should assume the seller who did this kind of work already ran the same numbers.
What to Verify Before You Assume You're Inheriting It
A listing that says "fully renovated" doesn't tell you whether the seller pursued this specific incentive, and a real estate photo of a new kitchen doesn't tell you how many years are left on a tax freeze. Before writing an offer on a renovated King William home, or comparing it against a similarly priced historic property elsewhere in San Antonio, it's worth confirming a few things directly:
- Ask the seller or listing agent whether a Certificate of Appropriateness and a substantial rehabilitation tax verification were filed with the Office of Historic Preservation for the work being marketed.
- Request the approval letter from the appraisal district. Bexar County requires property owners to submit a copy of that letter each year to keep claiming the incentive, so a current owner should have one on hand.
- Confirm which track applies, the ten-year freeze or the five-zero, five-fifty structure, and how many years remain, since a home in year two of the freeze carries a very different near-term tax picture than one in year nine.
- Remember the exemption only reduces the city portion of the bill. County, school district, and other line items on a Bexar County tax statement still apply at full value, so this changes part of your carrying cost, not all of it.
You can also check a specific parcel's exemption history directly with the Bexar County Tax Assessor-Collector's office, which administers collection for the taxing jurisdictions that touch King William.
FAQ
Does the tax exemption reduce my county or school property taxes too? No. The substantial rehabilitation incentive applies only to the City of San Antonio's portion of the tax bill. County, school district, and other jurisdictions still assess at full value.
Can I apply for this incentive myself after buying a King William home? Yes, if your own renovation reaches the 30 percent threshold and is certified through the Historic and Design Review Commission before you start the work covered by the exemption. It isn't something only the seller can access.
How do I find out if a specific house already has this exemption in place? Ask for the approval letter the seller has been submitting to Bexar County each year, or contact the Office of Historic Preservation directly to ask about a specific address.
Does a home need to be a designated landmark to qualify, or is being in the King William Historic District enough? Properties within a designated local historic district, which includes King William, can qualify without an individual landmark designation, as long as the rehabilitation meets the substantial threshold and is certified.
Comparing a King William asking price to a similar historic home in another neighborhood only tells half the story if one of those homes comes with years of reduced city taxes attached and the other doesn't. If you're weighing a purchase or getting ready to list a renovated property in King William, Cory Bakke can walk through what's actually priced into a specific listing, including whether a tax incentive is part of the picture. Request a Private Home Valuation to start with the real numbers behind your property.
