No, no, no the Hill Country is awful! Bad fishing, high property taxes and the summer humidity is brutal. I hear El Paso is great though.
Property taxes where I live on a $500k house run a person about $7k per year, move into a city and it’s about $9k.
Last edited by grout-scout; 04-25-2018 at 08:30 AM.
Since you have a small child, I would recommend researching school districts. You'll find Frisco, Allen, Plano to be tops in the area... But others are fine too: Prosper, Celina, Lewisville, Grapevine, South Lake, and I'm sure others. I wouldn't recommend Dallas ISD. Coming from Cali, not sure what you expect to spend on a house but that might dictate where you start looking.
They always get you somewhere. Property tax on 500K here would be approximately $5k. Sales tax is 7.875 (my county). Fishing license is $47Originally Posted by grout-scout
Love it here, but if they keep gating off the canals around here in southern Louisiana we may have to change that to the "sportsman's nightmare"you know, they don’t call it the “sportsman’s paradise” for nothing!
Sound like ol Grout is protesting....
YOU are not entitled to what I have earned!!!!!
2 families of Californians just recently moved a couple of houses from me. Seems like they are very nice people and are really enjoying the quiet that our little town offers them. They left their homes and bought houses twice as big as the ones they had there and about 20 times more land. One is a car collector and the other an antique tractor collector. Plenty of room here for them.
I am probably moving there in the next year or so. I am looking south of Austin. My son lives in Austin, but I am looking for cheaper homes on a lake and not looking to work or.fight Austin's traffic.
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Sound like ol Grout is protesting....
Lol, just getting tired of seeing some of these people move here. I know not all of them are bad, but many bring a different attitude and driving style that just isn’t what our state has been about. I’m talking about to the small towns, the cities have always been a mess. They are nuts in Dallas, Austin and Houston!
As much as Texas is growing I have to wonder exactly what areas are losing their population.
Marble Falls is a nice area and not too far from Austin, growing like crazy too though.
Welcome to TX! I moved my family to TX from Chicago area 3 years ago and couldn't be happier! We are also in the DFW area. We rented for the first 2 years to figure out where we wanted to live (I work from home and travel for work) so we had some flexibility others might not have based on where their job is. We rented in UpTown Dallas and damn did we hate it! Frankly, we hated living in Dallas in general, traffic sucks, homeless folks and crime, constant noise and potholes all over the place! So that made us realize we wanted to be in the suburbs, I wanted to be within 45 min of either airport so we looked north from Denton to the south in Waxahachie, and then out east towards Rockwall etc. We ended up settling on an development in Kaufman county about 3 miles N of Forney. This puts us 25 miles to downtown Dallas, 10-12 minutes to Rockwall.
You seem to be in the same boat, other than one Costco in Dallas that I know of the rest are in the suburbs. When it comes down to cost of living east of Dallas is probably where your dollar will go the furthest. It is what we discovered. There is a Costco in Rockwall so if you wanted to be within a 20-minute drive of there you have a ton of affordable options.
When you go North of Dallas you run into all the new corporate offices such as Toyota, State Farm, and many others. This has caused housing in Frisco, Plano, and other suburbs to actually more than double housing cost in the last 8 years. So unless you work at those places and want to be near work it isn't your best option when it comes to housing value. Ironically a lot of those people moving into the area came from CA and NJ so they still see those houses as a great value. The area is very nice and well developed but has become expensive.
When you go South of Dallas you have some new upcoming areas however you have a lot of not so great areas between you and Dallas. Will those areas redevelop or get worse? Who knows. We also didn't like the idea that the main highway in and out of the city was I35E which between construction, traffic traveling through the state and high levels of traffic and accidents that tend to shut down the highway we crossed it off the list.
This left us with East and NE of Dallas. We ended up north of Hwy 80 by 4 miles. Great compromise of location, cost of living, access to the city/airports as we need it without all of the negatives of living in the city. For me, the added bonus is I can get to lake fork in an hour if we went west or north of town and that would have increased it to two hours. Nice that it is possible to head to the lake after work for a couple of hours, other areas it just wouldn't be possible.
To break it down we are outside of Forney (not in city limits) and we bought a 3950 sq ft house and paid $98 per sq ft. for a new home with 3 car garage and 38' deep. When looking on N side of DFW we would have been $125 plus, S side we would have been about $100. Rockwall area split the difference around $105-115. So for $100K more for the same house to live up north wasn't worth it unless I worked there.
In contrast to Chicago, we would have paid double for the same house, we don't pay state income taxes anymore, great places to fish, better weather, lower cost of living across the board, better politics, gun friendly and on and on.
Best of luck to you and if you have any questions feel free to PM me.
David
Live in Broken Arrow and not pleased with Oklahoma? Just curious why, many lakes to fish, beautiful country, low real estate taxes, pretty good climate, new liquor laws take effect in October that will bring us in to the 21st century, low cost of living.....downside? Well, tornados in the spring and freezing rain in the winter. People are friendly here. I am not a fan of our Native American Casinos and the business this brings but it is what it is. I carry a gun everywhere I go and it is legal. Probably the lowest cost place to live if one is retired, no state tax on Social Security and Property tax is very low compared to some states. I fish twice a week when weather allows and there are a lot of lakes here to try that are pretty good.
Shhhhhhhhh........dang dude why don't you just roll out the welcome mat????
To a conservative Californian? I say be my neighbor, but like a mile away........I do live in the sticks and find my neighbors like me better there.
Naw Oklahoma is already over crowded.
Wait until all the Californians ruin Texas, we’ll be moving to Oklahoma.
Don't forget to add in your state income tax (which we don't have) as well.
Honora Primum Vel Nullum Omnin Honorem
I actually like OK, it is like going back in time as soon as you get past the casinos on the border. All the little towns look like my hometown did before Dallas started invading.Wait until all the Californians ruin Texas, we’ll be moving to Oklahoma.
I could write a book on CA taxes and fees.
Want to fish? $48.34. Want to use 2 rods? Additional $15.12. Want to fish Steelhead? $7.30. Sturgeon? $8.38.
Want to hunt? $48.34. Deer tag? $31.89.
And the hits just keep on coming.
Nah...Waco is a dump. Matter of fact, the whole state is. Oklahoma is a MUCH better place.
I to would like to move to Texas from Cal. My question would be are some of these areas Asian friendly? Reason my wife of 34yrs is Korean. You would not know it if you talked to her since she is totally Americanized and well educated and has been in California for 40+years. I have just heard for some people that some ethnicities' are not welcome not like in southern cal.
Anyone know?
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