Two markets, both counted the same morning
The median one bedroom starts at $1,062 in New Braunfels and $1,040 in San Marcos. The drive to the San Marcos square is 23 minutes from here and 8 from there. Both columns below come from the same daily rent update, run the same way in each market.
Nobody moves for rent alone and nobody moves for the drive alone. Here they are together, on the same size of home, from the same week.
Cheaper in San Marcos at the one bedroom size, or $264 across a year.
Longer to the San Marcos square from the median New Braunfels community. On a five day commute, about 125 hours a year more in the car.
Put the two together and the trade is about $2 for every extra hour in the car. Whether that is a good trade is yours to judge, and it is the reason this page stops here instead of telling you which to pick.
Each row is the middle starting rent at that size, on the day each market was last banked. A dash means too few communities carry that size to make a median mean anything.
| Size | New Braunfels | San Marcos | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Studiotoo few here, too few there | n/a | n/a | n/a |
| One bedroom30 here | $1,062 | $1,040 | +$22 |
| Two bedroom32 here | $1,299 | $1,277 | +$22 |
| Three bedroom25 here | $1,780 | $1,735 | +$45 |
| Four bedroomtoo few here, too few there | n/a | n/a | n/a |
A figure in the difference column is what you would pay on top in San Marcos. Green means New Braunfels is the cheaper of the two at that size.
| Cheapest starting rent | $799 | $700 |
|---|---|---|
| Running a special | 66.1% | 46% |
| Weeks free where offered | 7.4 | 7.2 |
Where these came from
We banked the New Braunfels column from our daily rent update on 2026-11-07, and the San Marcos column from that market's own daily update on 2026-11-06. Drive times are one reading with live traffic, last measured 2026-09-09. Every number on this page is one we recorded ourselves.
At the one bedroom size, the median starting rent is $1,062 here against $1,040 there, so the gap is $22 a month the other way. We recorded ours on 2026-11-07 and theirs on 2026-11-06, each in our daily rent update.
The median community here is 23 minutes out and the median one there is 8, so 15 minutes more each way. On a five day commute that is roughly 125 hours a year more in the car.
The same place ours do: a rental data service we subscribe to, the communities' websites and our team's checks, rolled into one rent update a day for every community there. Each number carries the date we recorded it. Neither column is a survey or a national average, and on both sides a few figures from the data service can be estimates.
This page will not tell you. The honest answer turns on what an hour of your evening is worth, and no dataset holds that. What we can do is walk both markets with you and say which specific buildings are worth your time. That part is free.