I've never lived in the SA area but have been through there for work and studied its demographics/ecomomics. The hill country of the metro is very pleasant looking but its also the desirable side for suburban/exurban/rural living and the houses are generally much higher than the countryside east of SA. But, overall Texas house prices are (at least have been) considerable less than NJ prices.
The area east, southeast of SA until you hit the outer periphery of growth coming out of Houston is very rural, mostly cattle country with maintained tame grass pastures and hayland. Some forest patches but generally along water course drainages. If you get more south of SA than east, then you start running into "brush" country of 10-20 tall shrubs and shorter trees. I find the country you asked about pleasant looking. The only kicker is I don't know how open armed smaller town folks there are to outsiders.
Much of the growth is along the I-35 corridor so north from SA to Austin. San Marcos is a nice smaller college town about half way between SA and Austin on the interstate. Probably more people from outside the region there because its has a state university. San Marcos might be a place to check out. It all depends on what side of the SA metro your job would be located. SA has grown into a big place and last I knew the city itself was actually still annexing land. I have a field pix at work that has one of those small green signs you see entering smaller places at the city limits. This was in 2006 and it read, (San Antonio, Population 1,065,..." Typically you don't see those little green signs proclaiming a city over a million people...
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