Confused about San Antonio... (Austin, New Braunfels: section 8, apartments, homes)

[vickyrola]

Ok I've seen the map and all the zip codes... but how big is San Antonio??? I thought one city had one zip code. How come SA is broken up into so many parts?? What towns outside of SA ( like 15 min drive) are considered VERY nice to live in? I've always lived in very nice towns and I'm just confused as to where in SA to move

[momof2dfw]

Zip codes are based on the size of the population w/in one area. There is a whole dorm building at UT in Austin that has its very own zip code. Downtown areas of large metropolitan cities w/ all of the different businesses will very likely have its own zip code. Whereas the different areas surrounding it will be broken up into different zip codes. The people on the North side of town will have 1 zip while those on the South, East, West will all have their own seperate zip. Then the suburbs will also have their own zip. The larger suburbs can also have multiple zip codes. It is all based on the size of the population in one give area.

[Sampaguita]

Most larger metropolitan areas have multiple zipcodes.

It's not that easy to use zipcodes to determine whether an area is very nice. In the 78258 zip code you have homes ranging from upper 100's into the millions. The same with 78209. A lot depends on the subdivision, too. Here in San Diego, within my zipcode we go from section 8 housing to million dollar homes. It's a matter of knowing exactly where you want to go. Even though we live in SD, we had to do a lot of driving around once we determined an area/zip we wanted to live in.

I drove by some beautiful-looking apartments in the Stone Oak area around Hardy Oaks - it's near a new golf course. I'll see if I can find them.

[Steel Man]

Looking at City-Data's page on San Antonio, there are 60 zip codes in San Antonio and the land area in 2000 was 407.6 square miles. Of course, San Antonio has annexed more land since 2000. Just to give you a reference on how big the San Antonio area is, drive around Loop 1604 (outer loop...Loop 410 is the inner loop at 53 miles around) and you will travel about 100 miles!

Other nice areas around San Antonio include Helotes, New Braunfels, Bulverde, Boerne, Castroville, among others.