Is Boerne, Texas a good place to live?

Boerne works well if you want Hill Country land, an A-rated school district, and a 30-to-45-minute I-10 commute to San Antonio. It is the county seat of Kendall County, not a San Antonio suburb. The trade-offs are 20.3 percent county growth since 2020, groundwater limits, and annual market-value reappraisal.

Start with the jurisdiction, because it drives everything else

Boerne is the county seat of Kendall County, about 31 miles northwest of San Antonio on Interstate 10 (City-Data, Boerne). ZIP codes are 78006 and 78015.

That sentence decides more than it looks like it does. Boerne is not in Bexar County and it is not inside the City of San Antonio. San Antonio's ordinances — short-term rental rules, tree ordinances, permitting — have no force here. Your appraisal district is Kendall Appraisal District at kendallad.org, not Bexar CAD, and that is where a homestead exemption and a protest get filed. People relocating from inside Loop 1604 routinely file with the wrong district the first year and lose the exemption for that tax year.

The schools are the single strongest argument

Boerne ISD earned an "A" rating from the Texas Education Agency for six consecutive years, including the 2024 and 2025 rating years, and scored 92 points in the 2024–2025 ratings with 20 distinction designations (Boerne Star; TEA 2025 accountability).

District-wide is not campus-by-campus. The Boerne Star reported that Viola Wilson, Currington, Herff and Kendall elementaries received lower grades in the same rating cycle. If you are buying for a specific elementary attendance zone, look up that campus, not the district average, and confirm the current zone with the district — attendance boundaries in a fast-growing district move.

Commute reality

Downtown San Antonio is a 30-to-45-minute drive depending on traffic. The I-10 corridor between Boerne and Loop 1604 is the pinch point, and it does not behave the same at 7:15 a.m. as it does at 10 a.m. Drive it, on a weekday, at the hour you would actually drive it, before you decide a neighborhood works.

Boerne is also a place people work rather than only sleep. It is the county seat, so county offices are here, and the city runs its own utilities. That matters less for commute math than for the fact that the town does not empty out at 8 a.m.

Growth is the real change

Kendall County grew 20.3 percent between 2020 and 2025, from an estimated 44,568 to 53,289 residents, and most of that was domestic migration — people moving in from elsewhere in the United States (Community Impact).

The City of Boerne's 2020 census population was 18,084, and 2026 figures are estimates that vary by source — World Population Review estimates roughly 25,209 (World Population Review). Treat those as estimates, not counts.

What that growth feels like on the ground: more traffic on Main and on I-10, school capacity planning, and new subdivisions where there was ranch land. Whether that is a reason to buy now or a reason to buy farther out is a personal call, but it is not a rumor. It is in the census estimates.

The tax trade-off nobody explains before the first bill

Texas has no state individual income tax. Texas funds local government primarily through property tax instead, and Texas property is reappraised at market value annually, subject to a 10 percent homestead cap on net appraised value once a homestead exemption is in place (Texas Comptroller).

For a home inside the city limits in Boerne ISD, the 2025 adopted rates per $100 of taxable value were:

Boerne ISD: 1.0109 — 0.6969 maintenance and operations plus 0.3140 debt (Kendall County).
City of Boerne: 0.4716 (Kendall County).
Kendall County: 0.377 — 0.317976 M&O plus 0.059024 debt, down from 0.3827 in 2024 (Kendall County).

Any special district on the parcel adds to that. Sales tax in Boerne is 8.25 percent total: 6.25 percent state, 1.50 percent city, 0.50 percent county (City of Boerne).

Buyers coming from California hit this hardest, because Proposition 13 limits reassessment there and Texas does not work that way. A CPA or tax advisor is the right person to model your own before-and-after.

Water is a live constraint, not a talking point

Boerne's drinking water comes from three sources: Canyon Lake surface water purchased through the Guadalupe-Blanco River Authority, Boerne City Lake, and local wells in the Trinity Group aquifers (City of Boerne).

Groundwater in Kendall County is regulated by the Cow Creek Groundwater Conservation District, which sets drought stages using roughly 42 monitor wells, stream gauges on Cibolo Creek and the Guadalupe River, and more than 100 rain gauge sites (Cow Creek GCD). Stages move. Check ccgcd.org for the current one rather than trusting a number in any article, including this one.

If you are buying acreage on a well instead of a city tap, that is a different due-diligence problem. Well yield, depth, casing condition and the district's rules on permitted pumping all belong in your inspection window.

Who Boerne is not for

Someone who wants a five-minute commute to the Medical Center. Someone who needs walkable everything — Boerne has a genuinely walkable downtown, but the rest is car country. Someone who wants a low tax bill in absolute dollars; Boerne ISD's rate plus a Hill Country valuation adds up. And someone buying acreage expecting no rules, because groundwater regulation, deed restrictions and the city's extraterritorial jurisdiction all reach past the city limit sign.

Questions about a specific property?

Call or text 830-446-3847 · Email heath.shepard@kw.com

This page summarizes public data as of September 2026 and is not legal or tax advice. Talk with a CPA about your tax picture, Kendall Appraisal District about exemptions and valuations, and a Texas real estate attorney about deed restrictions.