Every price, deal rank and distance on this site comes from a source we can name and a check we actually ran. This page is the full list: where each number comes from, how often it refreshes, and the rules that keep a wrong number off the page.
We read pricing from the SparkAPT feeds the communities publish themselves, and for the communities Spark does not carry we read the current starting rents, floor plan ranges and any move-in special straight off that community's own website. 111 communities in San Marcos are tracked this way. If a community only publishes pricing behind a contact form, we show the last range we could verify with the date we checked it, or no number at all. We never estimate a rent.
A "1 month free" banner on an expensive unit can be a worse deal than a cheaper unit with no special. So we rank deals by what you would actually pay: the special applied across a twelve month lease, divided by the square feet you get. Communities where rent is set by income limits rather than the market are kept out of market deal rankings on purpose. Comparing them against market rate communities would mislead in both directions.
Every time our price checks run, the numbers are written into a permanent ledger: dated, append only, never edited after the fact. Trend lines and "price dropped" flags come only from that measured record. We do not backfill history we didn’t record ourselves, and a month we missed stays missing rather than being estimated.
SanMarcosApartments.com is run by Ross Quade, a licensed Texas REALTOR® and apartment locator (TREC Lic. #679806), sponsored by Spirit Real Estate Group (TREC Broker Lic. #562021). The service is free to renters. Communities pay locators a referral fee, disclosed here so you know how the lights stay on. That fee never changes a ranking: the deal math above is the deal math, whoever pays.
Found a number that looks wrong? Tell us and we will check it against the source and correct it.