San Antonio, a city of nearly 1.5 million people, is located some 70 miles from Austin. Credit: Shutterstock / bobby20

Twitter is heaping ridicule on an online report from Realtor.com that gives the false impression that San Antonio is a suburb of Austin.

The report, published Tuesday, analyzed national trends in home prices, comparing the current downturn in the real estate market to that of 2006. It correctly noted a recent price drop in San Antonio, but offered a questionable explanation of where the city is located — not to mention how big it is compared to Texas’ capital city.

“Prices dropped 10% in San Antonio, TX, just outside of Austin,” the author o of the Realtor.com study noted.

In reality, San Antonio — a city of nearly 1.5 million people — is some 70 miles from Austin, a city with a considerably smaller population. Twitter user Evan Sutton wasted little time in pointing that out.

“That’s like saying ‘San Francisco, just outside of Sacramento’ or ‘Portland, just outside of Salem,'” Sutton tweeted. “Absolutely comical. Unless your main audience is douchebags and hipsters, in which case carry on with your dumb shit.”

Other Twitter users joined fun.

“Chicago, a small township just across the state line from Gary,” Twitter user Matt Hicks chimed in.

“New York City, just outside Albany,” Tony Choi commented.

The gaffe is reminiscent of a 2021 New York Times story that described New Braunfels — a city less than a half hour from San Antonio that boasts a population of nearly 100,000 — as “remote.”

After being ridiculed online and by local media, the New York Times changed the headline of that article — twice — first calling New Braunfels an “outlying” town, then evolving the headline to simply calling it a “Texas town,” according to the Express-News.

Coming soon: SA Current Daily newsletter. We’ll send you a handful of interesting San Antonio stories every morning. Subscribe now to not miss a thing.

Follow us: Google News | NewsBreak | Instagram | Facebook | Twitter

Related Stories

This article appears in Apr 19 – May 2, 2023.

Michael Karlis is a multimedia journalist at the San Antonio Current, whose coverage in print and on social media focuses on local and state politics. He is a graduate of American University in Washington,...