Rise of the renter
Here's how many new apartments San Antonio added in the last decade

You might call this the Decade of the Renter in San Antonio. New data shows Alamo City ranks in the top 15 in the U.S. for most new apartments from 2010 through 2019.
In a housing review of the 2010s published December 16, apartment website RentCafé estimates San Antonio will end this decade with 47,700 new apartments.
Twelve U.S. metro areas eclipse San Antonio on the list, including three in Texas. DFW, with an estimated 149,000 new apartments added during this decade, ranks first; Houston, with 114,100 new apartments, ranks third; and Austin, with 75,400 new apartments, ranks eighth.
New York City (No. 2, 125,100); Washington, D.C. (No. 4, 113,300); and Los Angeles (No. 5, 98,000) round out the top five.
All told, the four major metro areas in Texas have added 386,200 new apartments from 2010 through 2019, RentCafé data shows. At the same time, their populations have exploded.
From April 2010 to July 2018, the DFW metro area’s population soared by more than 1.1 million, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Houston nipped on DFW’s heels from 2010 to 2018, adding almost 1.08 million residents, the Census Bureau says.
During the same period, comparatively rapid growth occurred in the Austin metro area (nearly 452,000 new residents) and San Antonio metro area (more than 375,000 new residents).
As Texas’ major metro areas keep experiencing a population surge, the rise of the apartment renter promises to continue.
Data from Richardson-based property management software RealPage shows construction of 22,879 new apartments had been approved from October 2018 to October 2019 in the Houston area. That’s a year-over-year jump of 77.8 percent.
The numbers for DFW (19,562 permits, up 7.3 percent) and Austin (13,981, up 15 percent) were lower, but they still ranked among RealPage’s top 10 metro markets for the number of apartment construction permits issued.
Within U.S. metro areas, the cities of Houston, Austin, and San Antonio ranked among the top 10 places for apartment construction permits issued from October 2018 to October 2019, according to RealPage.