Velvet Realty Group

09/05/2026

4beds - 3baths - 2176 sqft
For Lease - Owner Managed
210-880-4519
3836 Otono, San Antonio TX 78223

09/05/2026

If you just got orders to JBSA, your first decision is not the house - it's which base. Lackland, Randolph and Fort Sam are on three separate sides of the city, and where you report changes what makes sense for you completely.

Second, your report date versus your house hunting trip. Those two dates decide whether you're buying now or renting first. There's no wrong answer, but make that call on purpose.

Third, if you're using your VA benefit, start the certificate of eligibility early. It's the piece people leave until the week they want to write an offer.

Send me your report date and we'll build the timeline backwards from there. (210) 880-4519

Velvet Realty Group is brokered by LPT Realty, LLC. Equal Housing Opportunity.

09/05/2026

Most of a closing bill in Bexar County is not set by the lender, and the parts that are fixed are fixed by someone you cannot negotiate with.

Texas regulates title insurance. The Department of Insurance sets the basic premium, and it says plainly that all title companies charge the same premium for a policy. The premium is arithmetic off your policy amount. What does differ between companies is the escrow fee, so that is the thing worth shopping.

One trap in that: the cheap loan policy your lender requires is cheap only because an owner's policy is being issued alongside it. Decline the owner's coverage and you pay full price for the loan policy instead. You do not save the premium, you just move it to the policy that protects the lender.

Recording is a county charge. Bexar County publishes it: $25 for the first page and $4 for each additional page, per document. Per document is the part people miss, because a purchase records more than one instrument.

The article also covers which lines are allowed to move after your Loan Estimate and by how much, how VA limits what a lender may charge, and why seller-paid title and origination costs generally do not count against the VA concession cap.

It is a reading guide for your own paperwork, not a calculator. Every figure is quoted from the agency that publishes it.

Jonathan Morris, Loan Officer, NMLS #2792614; Directions Equity LLC dba REV Mortgage, NMLS #214519. Educational information; not a commitment to lend. Equal Housing Lender.

Velvet Realty Group and Directions Equity LLC dba REV Mortgage are separate companies. You are not required to use either one to use the other.

Texas sets the title premium. Bexar County sets the recording fee. This walks through the Closing Disclosure section by section so you can read your own.

09/04/2026

A pre-qualification letter is an opinion. A pre-approval is evidence, and sellers know the difference.

Pre-qualified means you told someone your numbers and they told you roughly what that looks like - useful for planning. A pre-approval means I've had a chance to look at your documents, your income, your assets and your credit, and I have verified them.

It costs you nothing and commits you to nothing. Do it early, because if something needs fixing you want to find that out now, not two days before you write an offer.

Message me to start yours. (512) 573-9553

Jonathan Morris | Loan Officer | NMLS #2792614
Directions Equity LLC dba REV Mortgage | Company NMLS #214519
San Antonio Branch NMLS #2583932
Equal Housing Lender
Mortgage services offered in Texas. Loans subject to credit and property approval. Other restrictions and conditions may apply.

09/03/2026

Two houses a few blocks apart in central Schertz can be on different electric providers. That is not a quirk. It is how the city publishes it.

Here is what we collected for the FM 78 corridor, read from the publishers on August 30, 2026.

The road is not the city's. The City of Schertz names I-35, FM 3009, FM 78, FM 1518 and I-10 as routes it does not maintain, and directs potholes, signal outages, guard rails and debris to TxDOT. If your question is address-specific -- access, a driveway, a permit -- verify the responsible agency for that location rather than assuming which office holds it.

Two projects sit on the corridor now. TxDOT is expanding FM 1518 from FM 78 to I-10, which the city describes as $73 million of improvements along 5.6 miles. I-35 NEX Central is a $1.5 billion design-build covering 9.5 miles from I-410 N to FM 3009, under construction since June 2022, which TxDOT estimates finishing in late 2027. Any commute you time today is a construction-period commute.

Four utilities, four separate lookups. Electricity is GVEC, CPS or NBU by area. Water and wastewater bill through the city, with the supply managed by the Schertz-Seguin Local Government Corporation or the Green Valley Special Utility District and treatment by Cibolo Creek Municipal Authority. Gas is CenterPoint for most of town and CPS around Lookout Rd and Doerr Lane. The city itself calls those geographic labels rough estimations, so ask for a recent bill from the property rather than trusting the area label.

The water is Carrizo rather than Edwards, and has been since March 2003. People hear that and assume the yard rules are loose. They are not. Year-round outdoor sprinkler watering is prohibited between 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. daily. A handheld hose or a drip system can run at any hour.

Flood status is a panel question first and a parcel question second. Schertz flood mapping spans three counties and seventeen sheets. No neighborhood name answers it, and no page can state a property's zone. Pull the parcel, confirm the panel, and get the insurance quote before the option period runs out.

Two of the city's three Neighborhood Empowerment Zones are named for this ground: Main Street and FM 78. The city links a boundary map for each and does not print street limits in text, so neither do we.

Every source is linked and dated on the page. This is general guidance, not legal, tax, or insurance advice. Send us an address and we will run the four utility questions and the flood panel against that parcel.

Velvet Realty Group is brokered by LPT Realty, LLC. Equal Housing Opportunity.

Along FM 78 in central Schertz the road is TxDOT's, the electricity, water, wastewater and gas each come from a different organization, and the split changes with position. Here is where the city publishes each answer.

09/03/2026

Two houses with the same Schertz mailing address can sit on different tax rolls, be valued by different offices, and be zoned to different school districts.

Schertz sits in three counties. The City of Schertz publishes its tax rate as three separate lists, one for each. The city's own rate is the same on all three at $0.511800 per $100 of valuation. Almost nothing else is.

The Bexar side carries four line items the others do not: a flood control fund, the San Antonio River Authority, a hospital district, and Alamo Community College. The Guadalupe and Comal sides carry a Lateral Road rate instead, at two different amounts. They are not three versions of one list. They are three different lists.

The Bexar side also names two school districts. That is not one parcel paying both. It is the city listing the two that appear on its Bexar-side properties, and any one parcel is in one of them. The city's own page says the Bexar side has multiple school and special taxing districts.

Then the ZIPs. Five ZIP areas cover city land. 78154 is the one most people mean by Schertz and it holds 71.2% of the city's land, but only 69.6% of 78154 is inside the city limits. Just under 12% of Schertz sits in a New Braunfels delivery area. A house there has a New Braunfels ZIP, is inside the City of Schertz, and sits in Comal County, which means Comal ISD and the Comal tax list. Nothing about the mailing address says any of that.

The City of Schertz says the city sits within five school districts and names three that cover the majority of it. Attendance boundaries are set by the districts and are revised from time to time, so a district cannot be inferred from a subdivision name or a ZIP. We publish the boundaries and the offices that set them. We do not publish school ratings or rankings, and we do not use them to steer anyone toward or away from a neighborhood.

Every rate came from the City of Schertz tax rate page, set September 2025 for taxes due January 2026. Every ZIP share was computed from the Census Bureau's 2020 ZCTA-to-place relationship file, which we downloaded and read ourselves. Both on August 27, 2026. The page names the office that publishes each answer and dates it.

This is not tax advice and it is not an estimate of anyone's bill. The rates are before any exemption, and only the appraisal district holding a parcel can state the jurisdictions that bill it. Send us an address and we will pull that record and read it with you.

Velvet Realty Group is brokered by LPT Realty, LLC. Equal Housing Opportunity.

Schertz sits in three counties and five ZIP areas. Which one an address lands in sets the county rate, the school district, and the appraisal district that values it.

09/03/2026

In Texas you can back out of a home purchase for any reason at all. It's called the option period - you negotiate a fee and a number of days when you go under contract, and inside those days you can walk and your earnest money comes back.

That's also the window your inspection happens in, which is why the number of days matters more than people think. Too short and you're deciding whether to move on without a report.

Negotiate it before you sign, not after.

Going under contract soon? Send me a message and we'll set your option period before you sign. (210) 880-4519

Velvet Realty Group is brokered by LPT Realty, LLC. Equal Housing Opportunity.

09/03/2026

Private mortgage insurance does not come off a conventional loan because the market went up. Federal law measures against original value, and it fixes that number at closing.

The Homeowners Protection Act builds three exits. You can request cancellation in writing at 80 percent of original value. The servicer must terminate automatically at 78 percent, without being asked. And a midpoint backstop ends the requirement partway through the amortization period regardless of balance.

Original value is the lesser of the contract sales price or the appraised value at closing, or the appraised value relied on for a refinance. A servicer may run its own current-value program, but that is a contract term rather than the federal right. Worth knowing which one you are being told about.

None of this covers FHA, VA, or USDA charges. The statute excludes them by definition.

The guide walks through each date, what a request has to satisfy, and what the servicer must put in writing. Every section links its source.

Jonathan Morris, Loan Officer, NMLS #2792614; Directions Equity LLC dba REV Mortgage, NMLS #214519. Educational information; not a commitment to lend. Equal Housing Lender.

Velvet Realty Group and Directions Equity LLC dba REV Mortgage are separate companies. You are not required to use either one to use the other.

The Homeowners Protection Act measures against original value, not today’s market value. Here is what that means for a cancellation request.

09/02/2026

Two houses in 78108 can sit in different cities, carry a different set of taxing jurisdictions, and answer to different city rules. The ZIP settles none of it.

Here is what we pulled for Cibolo, each source linked and dated on the page.

The ZIP is not the city. By the Census tabulation area, 78108 is 62.60 percent City of Cibolo, 18.57 percent City of Schertz, 18.50 percent no incorporated place, and 0.33 percent City of Santa Clara. Close to a fifth of the ZIP is unincorporated Guadalupe County, where city services and city ordinances do not reach.

The tax bill is four lines, not one rate. Per $100 of valuation: Schertz-Cibolo-Universal City ISD $1.0769, City of Cibolo $0.5226, Guadalupe County $0.2784, Lateral Road $0.0520. Total $1.9299. A house a few streets away that sits outside the city limits does not carry the city line, and one inside Schertz carries Schertz's instead. Same ZIP, different bill.

Schools are assigned by the district. Not by the ZIP, not by the city line, and not by the subdivision name in the listing. Confirm the campus for the exact address with Schertz-Cibolo-Universal City ISD.

In practice that is four lookups on the address itself: pull the parcel, confirm which city the parcel is in, read the jurisdictions on the tax record, and confirm the campus with the district.

This is general guidance, not legal or tax advice. Send us an address and we will run those four against that parcel.

Velvet Realty Group is brokered by LPT Realty, LLC. Equal Housing Opportunity.

ZIP 78108 is the Cibolo delivery area, and under two thirds of it is inside the City of Cibolo. What the mailing address settles, and what it does not.

09/01/2026

The conforming loan limit is not one number to memorize. The official lookup uses the calendar year, the property’s county or county-equivalent, and the property’s unit count.

For 2026, FHFA identifies a one-unit national baseline of $832,750 and a one-unit high-cost ceiling of $1,249,125. Those figures only make sense with their year, geography, and unit qualifications. The county file supplies the applicable value.

Crossing that line means the loan amount is above the Enterprise acquisition boundary commonly used to distinguish a jumbo loan. It does not determine borrower qualification, set a property-price ceiling, create a commitment to lend, or promise that a jumbo product is available. Jumbo documentation and underwriting rules vary by lender or investor.

The guide walks through the official lookup and links every current source.

Jonathan Morris, Loan Officer, NMLS #2792614; Directions Equity LLC dba REV Mortgage, NMLS #214519. Educational information; not a commitment to lend. Equal Housing Lender.

Velvet Realty Group and Directions Equity LLC dba REV Mortgage are separate companies. You are not required to use either one to use the other.

Find the applicable FHFA limit by year, county, and unit count, then read the result as an Enterprise acquisition boundary—not a personal loan decision.