Pull up five real estate sites and search Alamo Heights right now. You will get five different answers to what should be a simple question: what does a home here actually cost. One site says the median sale price is $694,000. Another says $850,000 for the same month. A third puts the average near $1.1 million. None of these numbers are wrong. They are all measuring something slightly different, and the gap between them tells you more about how to shop this market than any single figure could.
Here is what a snapshot of that disagreement actually looks like.
| Source | Time Window | Price Figure | Homes Sold |
|---|---|---|---|
| Redfin | November 2025 | $694,000 median sale price | 3 |
| Movoto | November 2025 | $850,000 median sale price | 25 |
| Orchard | Trailing 30 days (as of early September 2026) | $830,559 median sale price | 3 |
| HAR.com | August 2026 | $1,103,880 average list price | Not disclosed |
| Walletinvestor | March 2026 | $698,938 median price (algorithmic) | Not disclosed |
Same neighborhood, overlapping months, a spread of nearly $400,000. If you were comparing Alamo Heights against another Hill Country community using whichever number popped up first, you could be off by a house.
Why the Number Moves So Much
The first reason is simple math. Alamo Heights is its own incorporated city, not a subdivision, and it covers about 1.9 square miles with a population just over 7,300 as of the most recent census. That is a small town by any measure, and small towns don't produce many home sales in a given month. Redfin logged 3 closings in November 2025. Orchard logged 3 in its trailing 30-day window as of early September 2026. Compare that to Movoto's count of 25 sales in the same November, and you start to see the problem.
When a market only sells a handful of homes a month, one expensive closing or one distressed sale can swing the median by tens of thousands of dollars. A city with hundreds of monthly sales absorbs an outlier without much movement. A city with three doesn't have that luxury. Every number in that table above is technically correct for the sample it drew from. The samples themselves are just too thin to trust on their own.
Which Alamo Heights Are You Actually Comparing
The second reason is where the real disagreement lives, and it has nothing to do with sample size. It has to do with what each site is calling "Alamo Heights" in the first place.
The actual City of Alamo Heights, incorporated in 1922, is bordered by Olmos Park, Terrell Hills, Lincoln Heights, and Brackenridge Park near Fort Sam Houston. That is a tight, specific boundary. But most of the internet doesn't shop by city limits. It shops by ZIP code, and the 78209 ZIP code is a much bigger territory. It scoops in Terrell Heights, Mahncke Park, Oak Park-Northwood, Wilshire and Wilshire Village, and slices of Terrell Hills, none of which are inside the actual city of Alamo Heights.
That is almost certainly why Movoto's sales count runs so far ahead of Redfin's and Orchard's for the same month. A data source pulling from the ZIP code is counting homes in half a dozen adjacent neighborhoods that carry a different tax rate, different city services, and in some cases a different school district, and folding them into one number labeled Alamo Heights.
The market has already priced this confusion in. One recent listing near the border pitched itself as offering the Alamo Heights lifestyle without the Alamo Heights taxes, which is a tidy admission that a home minutes away can share a school zone and a ZIP code without sharing a city limit, a tax bill, or the number a portal will eventually quote as the neighborhood's median.
The Teardown Effect
The third piece of this is architecture, and it is specific to a handful of streets. Alamo Heights has a genuine mix of 1920s Tudor and Colonial Revival homes, mid-century ranches on oversized lots, and brand-new custom builds sitting on infill parcels where an older home was demolished. Streets like Hermosa Drive and Eldon Road have become known for exactly this kind of teardown-and-rebuild activity, where a buyer pays for the lot and the school zoning, then replaces what was there.
New construction from builders like Starnes Development, working with architect Overland Partners on a six-home enclave, or CVF Homes building customizable layouts in a private Northwood cul-de-sac, closes at prices that don't resemble the 1950s ranch next door. Price per square foot across the neighborhood runs a wide range, roughly $300 to $450 depending on the source and the month, and that range exists because a five-bedroom new build and a modest original-condition cottage are being averaged into the same number.
Put a single one of those new builds into a month with only three total closings, and you can watch the median jump by six figures without a single thing changing about the broader market.
Three Things Worth Knowing Before You Trust Any Number
- A "median" built on 3 sales is a snapshot, not a trend. Ask how many transactions the figure is based on before you anchor to it.
- Confirm whether the data source is using the actual city limits or the 78209 ZIP code. They are not the same market, and they don't carry the same tax rate.
- Days on market tells you more than price does in a thin market. Redfin logged homes selling in 23 days in November 2025, down from 58 days the year before, while Orchard's most recent window showed 89 days, down from 139. Both point toward a market that is still moving, even as the price figures argue with each other.
What This Means If You're Comparing Neighborhoods
If you are weighing Alamo Heights against Cordillera Ranch, Sonterra, or any other Hill Country community, resist the urge to drop a single median price into a spreadsheet and call it done. The number you land on depends entirely on which boundary the source drew and how many sales happened to close that month. A street-level comparison, built from actual closed sales inside the true city limits and matched by lot size, school zoning, and whether the home is original construction or a recent rebuild, will tell you far more than any aggregate figure.
This is also why price per square foot deserves more weight than it usually gets in casual comparisons. A median list price can be dragged around by a single luxury closing. Price per square foot on a like-for-like basis, comparing a 1950s ranch to another 1950s ranch rather than to a brand-new build on Hermosa Drive, gives you a steadier read on what your money buys.
A Few Straight Answers
Is Alamo Heights the same thing as the 78209 ZIP code? No. Alamo Heights is a separately incorporated city covering about 1.9 square miles. The 78209 ZIP code is larger and includes neighboring areas like Terrell Heights, Mahncke Park, and Oak Park-Northwood, which sit outside the actual city limits and carry their own tax rates and, in some cases, a different school district.
Why do some sites show so few home sales in a given month? Because the true city of Alamo Heights is small. With roughly 7,300 residents, it simply doesn't generate a high volume of closings, so any given month's median is built on a small number of transactions and can move sharply based on one or two sales.
Does new construction affect the median more than older homes? Yes, disproportionately so. A teardown-and-rebuild sale on a street like Hermosa Drive or Eldon Road can close well above the price of a comparable-sized older home nearby, and in a month with only a handful of total sales, that single closing can shift the reported median by a significant margin.
If you're trying to figure out what a specific block, lot, or rebuild opportunity in Alamo Heights is actually worth, a spreadsheet of ZIP-code averages won't get you there. Evoke Realty works this market street by street, and we're happy to walk you through what a real comparison looks like before you make a decision based on a number that might not hold up past this month. Contact Us.
