New homes sprout up in, around Seguin

Dalondo Moultrie The Seguin Gazette

For the last couple years, Seguin has proved very attractive to home builders and subdivision developers with no end in sight to the housing boom that started around the same time as COVID-19 touched down in the community.

The numbers bear some of the story of the city’s continued population expansion, said Pamela Centeno, city of Seguin director of planning and codes.

“Pretty close to COVID is when we really started seeing the permits coming for housing,” she said. “They had to get through the infrastructure at first, the roads and those things. Then it hit and we’ve been really busy.”

Centeno’s office is responsible for issuing permit requests for new construction plats in the city. She has been in the city for nearly two decades and watched things sailing smoothly along.

That was until 2020 when the projected growth here started becoming a reality.

“For a number of years, we knew the houses were going to come because we were working with the developers,” Centeno said. “Of course, it takes some time to go through the stages, get plans approved, build all the infrastructure, get the utilities and the roads. We’ve been going through that process.

“Once it started coming in, it happened quickly.”

For all of 2019, the city issued 172 permits for a combination of single-family and duplex homes across Seguin, she said. That included 134 single-family homes and 38 duplex units, Centeno said. A duplex is a pair of attached houses built as two separate home units.

Her office issued permits in 2020 for 593 new homes as expansion increased, Centeno said. Of those 593 permits, 497 were single-family homes and 96 duplex units, she said.

The growth marked nearly a 245% increase in permits for homes. And growth continued.

For 2021, her office issued permits for 1,141 new homes, Centeno said. Those included 1,003 single-family and 138 duplex units, she said.

Issued permits for new homes increased year over year by another 92%.

Seguin isn’t alone in realizing growth, but the city has several things that make it attractive to newcomers, Centeno said.

“Texas overall is growing. This area has seen so much growth — New Braunfels and San Marcos, the I-35 corridor has been growing like crazy,” she said. “In Seguin, there’s land available for developers to purchase and build homes. Seguin itself, I’ve lived here for a long time and I’m surprised it took so long because Seguin is just a great place.”

The city has large tracts of farm land and agricultural tracts being sold to developers for subdivisions, Centeno said. The available open space is helping to spur growth. But that’s not the entire story, she said.

“An interesting point to the story of growth, besides obvious new subdivisions, we’re actually seeing quite a bit of infill housing,” Centeno said. “Older lots in town that are existing in older neighborhoods, some are properties no one ever built on. Some are properties that were demolished at one point.

“We’re seeing people come in and buy those lots.”

Some areas in already-established neighbors have lots where a family may have owned two lots and only built on one. They’re selling those lots and builders are constructing new homes on them, the planning director said.

“I love to see the new houses going into the old neighborhoods,” Centeno said. “We’re seeing people remodel and add on to their homes, the older homes too.

“We’re seeing homes everywhere in Seguin.”

In 2020, the city had 50 homes built in the older parts of town, she said. The next year the number grew to 64 homes outside of subdivisions, Centeno said.

While the numbers may seem small, in contrast to having just 172 permits issued across the entire city in 2019, the perspective changes.

Final numbers for 2022 permits could show a different story but it’s unlikely since so far this year the planning and codes department is averaging about 100 new home permits per month, Centeno said. Up to as many as 150 permits issued in a single month has occurred recently, she said.

Seguin has platted more than 3,000 units to be built in the recent boom, causing lots of additional work for her department, Centeno said. But foresight has allowed for planning and helped ease the workload a bit, she said.

“There’s a lot involved,” Centeno said. “With the support of management and City Council, our teams have grown. We have more staff now but it still can be a struggle because we can’t predict what we will receive as far as new homes coming in or new subdivisions being proposed.”

She knows many people have wished for growth in the city but more on the commercial side, Centeno said. She can’t be positive but foresees one hand washing the other and an incoming slate of additional commercial growth on the back of the current housing explosion, she said.

“New growth can be a challenge,” Centeno said. “It’s one that I know residents of Seguin have asked for a long time, for new commercial growth. But [with] new commercial growth, you see the houses first. For new businesses to come to town, houses are usually what trigger that.”

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