Occasionally, when speaking with a San Antonio real estate agent, you might hear them refer to “area” or the “SABOR MLS area map.” This map, found within the San Antonio Board of Realtors MLS allows agents to quickly and easily find and define locations for homes for sale.
Although many residents might use general directions like north San Antonio or the westside of San Antonio, using the SABOR MLS area map makes things a lot easier…but only if you know what the numbered codes mean.
Understanding The SABOR MLS Area Map
Using a simple map of the city of San Antonio, SABOR divided up the city into 30 main areas (some are further divided to help better define them) numbered 0100 through 3000. Some large areas like the northside of San Antonio outside of Loop 1604 and along the 281 corridor were split up, so what is known are Area 1800 is split into four parts: 1801, 1802, 1803, and 1804.
It sounds a bit confusing at first, but as you get used to it, the areas start to make sense, particularly when you are searching for homes for sale for a buyer-client that wants to find a home in a wide, more general, area. Because zip codes often cross features and landmarks when their areas are defined, they can be a bit more difficult to search by. Of course we can find homes by zip code too.
The SABOR MLS area map utilizes mostly major road ways to define each area. For example Area 0400 is bound by Loop 1604 to the north, Loop 410 to the south, and is located between TX 16 (Bandera Road) and IH-10. The hardest part about learning the areas is knowing which of the smaller (unmarked) streets represent each boundary so that you can get a quick idea of which area a home is in by knowing it’s location on a map.
Areas 2500, 2600, and 2700 are each separated into multiple sections as they are all based on counties (Kendall, Comal, and Guadalupe) and area 3000 is the catch-all for everything not in one of the defined SABOR MLS map areas.
As A Buyer Or Seller Do You Need To Know The Areas?
As a buyer or seller, you might think this is a lot to learn, but the great news is you don’t have to. As agents we quickly move between general area names like “the Stone Oak area” to our SABOR MLS our map codes (1801 and parts of 1803) or The Dominion (1003).
That’s one of the great thing about working with a Realtor – we do this everyday and we’ve learned where and how to look for properties in our MLS (whose data feeds the public sites like Zillow or Realtor.com). We spend our time learning the ins and outs of the local area and understanding the issues that affect it. We study and sharpen our skills constantly so that you don’t have to.
The area map graphic above is used for illustrative purposes and is owned and maintained by the San Antonio board of Realtors.
