This Week in New Braunfels
Father Killed in FM 725 Head-On Crash; Two Arrested
A head-on collision on FM 725 on the evening of September 12 killed 27-year-old Alex "Bubba" Nunez and hospitalized his 3-year-old daughter. New Braunfels police said the driver of the pickup, Rafael Alejandro Arreguin-Ramirez, appeared to be intoxicated and was taken to a local hospital for a blood search warrant before being booked into the Guadalupe County Jail. A passenger in the truck, 23-year-old Alejandro Aguillen Acosta, fled on foot and was found hiding in a garage in a nearby neighborhood before also being taken into custody.
Downtown Businesses Rally Around Nunez Family
Two downtown New Braunfels businesses have stepped in to raise funds for the family of Alex Nunez in the wake of Saturday's fatal crash. The community response reflects a pattern locals have come to recognize — when a tragedy hits close to home, the small-business district along the downtown corridor tends to organize quickly.
Labor Day Hit-and-Run: New Braunfels Woman Speaks Out
A New Braunfels woman has spoken publicly after her boyfriend was struck and killed by a vehicle while changing a flat tire over Labor Day weekend. The case remains under investigation, adding to what has been a difficult stretch of traffic-related fatalities in the area.
New Braunfels Man Added to DPS Most Wanted Immigrants List
A man wanted by the New Braunfels Police Department has been added to the Texas Department of Public Safety's 10 Most Wanted Criminal Immigrants list, according to a news release. Franklin Estuardo Gonzalez Flores is described as 5 feet 6 inches tall and approximately 130 pounds.
Three Texas Men Charged in Massive Statewide Grain Theft Operation
The Guadalupe County Sheriff's Office announced charges against three Texas men — Pablo Franco Jr., 46, Ricky Regalado, 52, and Larry Regalado, 57 — accused of stealing approximately 9 million pounds of grain in a statewide operation. The case represents one of the larger agricultural theft investigations tied to the region in recent memory.
Real Estate Market
The San Antonio–New Braunfels metro is showing a split signal right now, and it is worth reading carefully. On the demand side, the metro posted a 6.6% annual increase in pending home sales in August — one of the top performances among the nation's 50 largest tracked metros, according to NAR data reported by Realtor.com Economics. That is a meaningful number, and it suggests that buyers are still entering contracts here at a rate that outpaces most comparable markets. At the same time, the metro's median listing price has declined 3.6% year-over-year to $324,450. More signings at lower prices is not a contradiction — it is what a market correction looks like when it is functioning in an orderly way rather than seizing up.
The Four Rivers Association of Realtors data on New Braunfels specifically points to something worth watching at the ZIP code level: properties are taking longer to sell across multiple submarkets, and the trends are diverging by neighborhood. That kind of localized variance matters more than the metro-wide headline. A home in one corridor of New Braunfels may be sitting on the market while a comparable property three miles away moves quickly. For buyers, that means there is genuine negotiating room in some pockets. For sellers, it means pricing discipline and local comparables matter more than they did two or three years ago, when almost anything moved fast.
The broader Texas context is also relevant. The Texas Real Estate Research Center reported 34,956 closed home sales statewide in June 2026, up 8.6% from the prior year, with a statewide median of $342,900. New Braunfels sits below that statewide median, which continues to give it a relative affordability advantage over Austin — where median prices were running around $550,000 in the three months ending August 2026 — and positions it as a logical landing point for households relocating within the I-35 corridor. The rental market reflects that pressure too: average rent in New Braunfels runs around $1,170 per month, well below the national average of $1,665, and the apartment inventory continues to expand with 496 recently constructed units currently listed. That supply addition will bear watching as a potential moderating force on both rents and entry-level purchase demand.