With a small yard and inviting front porch, the newly built houses along a short street in an established neighborhood in far northeastern Bexar County have all the trademarks of a single-family home.
What makes them unusual perhaps, at least for a house in San Antonio, Texas, is the minimal size of not just the house but also the lot. Another key difference: the price tag of just over $150,000.
More small-home developments like Elm Trails could be coming as the solution to a nationwide housing shortage and the rising cost of building materials. But only if cities allow it.
Miami-based homebuilder Lennar Homes started construction months ago in the Spring Meadows subdivision near Converse, building two styles of detached homes that range between about 350 and 660 square feet — a size that’s comparable to a studio apartment.
At least 30 are in various stages of construction in Elm Trails. A total of 100 houses eventually will be built.
The two-story homes come with one bedroom and one or two bathrooms, depending on the model, and an open floor plan with a fully-equipped kitchen.
In the Cooley model, a built-in ladder is used to access the upper-level open space, and in the Henley, a narrow set of stairs leads to a sitting area and bedroom.
The houses stand side-by-side along a street named Elm Cove, two-tenths of a mile long, and three smaller streets. The homes are built on lots that measure about 20 feet across, leaving a narrow space between each residence.
Building codes in Converse, as in San Antonio, require most new single-family homesites to be a minimum of 60 or 65 feet wide, with some exceptions.
But Elm Trails is outside of city limits, where lot size is not regulated.
Not bigger in Texas
San Antonio is the first city where the nationwide homebuilder has built its small-scale homes, said Brian Barron, San Antonio division president for Lennar.
“We’ve been working on bringing these homes to market for the past two years or so,” Barron said. “We took what we had seen nationally with the growing acceptance of small-footprint homes and began researching what it would take to do that across an entire community.”
The National Association of Home Builders reported in November that the median size of new family homes is 2,276 square feet, down from a high of about 2,700 square feet in 2015. Rising interest rates and construction costs are partly the reason for the trend toward smaller homes.
Small-home developments could be the answer to housing shortages and rising costs. But zoning is often a roadblock.
“As more and more municipalities address affordability, we believe it will be important that traditional zoning requirements are updated to reflect new types of housing,” Barron said.
While Elm Trails is a full residential development made up of tiny homes, the prevalence of small homes by way of backyard casitas or granny flats could soon become more widespread in parts of San Antonio.
Late last year, City Council approved 191 amendments to San Antonio’s unified development code, including changes intended to make it easier to build accessory dwelling units.
In March, a state senator from Houston introduced a bill that would nearly eliminate most zoning with lot size requirements in municipalities that are in counties with a population of 300,000 or more. Approved by the state Senate, SB 1787 was passed to the House on May 11.
If adopted, the bill would eliminate the City of San Antonio’s zoning codes that regulate lot sizes with regard to established development patterns and design flexibility, said Michael Shannon, director of the city’s development services.
“Older neighborhoods like, for example, Roosevelt Park or Lavaca are suddenly going to lose the ability to control how many houses go on any given lot,” said Zoning Commissioner John Bustamante. “The design and complexion of that neighborhood is going to change immediately.”
Smaller = more affordable
Lennar’s Barron added that the homebuilder is working to find creative ways to make homeownership more affordable which some experts say could ease the housing shortage.
In Austin, Lennar partnered with ICON Build which uses 3D printing to build homes faster and with less labor cost than what traditional building methods require.
In Elm Trails, buyers will pay between $160,000 and $170,000 for a new home — or about half the median price of a new house in San Antonio, and even less than half for a condo or townhome.
In San Antonio, the median price for a new single-family home is $334,000, according to data from the San Antonio Board of Realtors. A new condo or townhome runs closer to $445,000.
The average homeowner or condo owner of properties in that price range would pay between $8,000 and about $10,000 a year in property taxes, according to the SmartAsset property tax calculator.
Lennar’s 350-square-foot Cooley model is also available in its Southton Meadows development in the southeastern part of the county near Braunig Lake. It is priced on the builder’s website at $125,000 but the homes are almost sold out, said a Lennar spokesman.
As the largest homebuilder in the nation by revenue, behind D.R. Horton, Lennar has houses for sale and under construction in 13 San Antonio neighborhoods.
Lennar also is seeking to build a controversial wastewater treatment plant in far northwestern Bexar County to support a 2,900-home development on 1,160 acres that was once part of the historic Guajolote Ranch.
The Elm Trails homes, situated near Judson ISD schools, military installations and the Austin-San Antonio corridor, are attracting mostly first-time home buyers, from single people to couples and families, Barron said.
“They are excited to be able to afford a new home.”
