Is Austin a good Move? (mortgages, house, new construction)

[the green painter]

Hi everyone! My name is Eric, and as you can see I am a "Green", painter. My girlfriend and I are planning to move to Austin in January. We are currently living in Kalispell Montana, but originally from Sacramento California.
There are many reasons why we want to move to Austin, so if you could give me your input I would greatly appreciate it. The first reason we want to move is the weather. We are Californians, so that means we thrive on the rays of the beautiful sun. Montana is too cold as well as dismal during the 8 months of cloud cover some would call winter. Personally I call that hell frozen over. The second reason is that we are young and still like to have fun. Is there lots to do in Austin? Outdoors and in? The third and final reason for tonight's post is the ECONOMY. Being a painting contractor, the economy decides my paycheck. How is the economy in Austin?
Thank you so much and really look forward to receiving your responses.

[atlanta hope]

You'd probably like it. Austin is kinda green so you'd find work. There are lots of folks from California here too. Don't know about all the things to do since I just moved here myself but seems to be lots of biking, hiking, kayaking going on round these parts. And of course you know about all the live music, right?

[the green painter]

I do which is a total bonus. Concerts never show up in Montana, especially not indie groups. Thanks for the reply!

[Julian/SWE]

It seems like there is a million of threads with the same root.

[marylee54]

The weather has been glorious the last several weeks! Do bear in mind when its hot--its hot! summers are hot here, oftentimes triple digits, 100+. With that in mind, winters are mild, and seems like there's always a lot of sun. Our Fall has been great, sunny days, cool at night but nice days, I wear sleeveless and shorts in the afternoons!''No place is perfect, we do have our share of bad weather, it can get cold and rainy here, but we have more sunny days than rainy. I think you'll like it here!

[twange]

Originally Posted by marylee54

The weather has been glorious the last several weeks!

Oh, indeed! Pretty much perfect weather for a month.

Lots to do here, outside and in. Good food, nice people...you'll probably like it. My only advice(based on what it seems you're looking for) is to stay as close to the city as you can afford. There are many nice areas outside the city but if you want to take advantage of all the Austin-y things on a daily basis, you'll want to be close. Traffic can be a bit oppressive if you need to drive across the city much and the Public Transportation is about average.

Good luck!

[marylee54]

Originally Posted by the green painter

Hi everyone! My name is Eric, and as you can see I am a "Green", painter. My girlfriend and I are planning to move to Austin in January. We are currently living in Kalispell Montana, but originally from Sacramento California.
There are many reasons why we want to move to Austin, so if you could give me your input I would greatly appreciate it. The first reason we want to move is the weather. We are Californians, so that means we thrive on the rays of the beautiful sun. Montana is too cold as well as dismal during the 8 months of cloud cover some would call winter. Personally I call that hell frozen over. The second reason is that we are young and still like to have fun. Is there lots to do in Austin? Outdoors and in? The third and final reason for tonight's post is the ECONOMY. Being a painting contractor, the economy decides my paycheck. How is the economy in Austin?
Thank you so much and really look forward to receiving your responses.

You know, this is just an idea---I'm assuming you're a house painter, right?

Seems there's a tremendous amount of building going on right now, homes, offices, shopping, retail--I don't understand why theyre's so much building going on when no one can get mortgages? Well, anyways, seems to me there would be a lot of work for painters and other trades in new construction,good luck!

[ktex]

Austin does seem to be isolated a bit from the overall "doom and gloom" of the economy. Not that we won't feel it at all - but it seems the outskirts will feel it the worst as opposed to the City center of Austin. There is a LOT of remodeling still going on and I'm surprised at bit too - there's a brand new million dollar house right down the street and their building another one right next door - so who knows!

[BJB817]

One thing I'll warn you about being in the trades, you'll have a hard time getting the prices you're used to back north. There's LOTS of competition from the illegal crowd. That, coupled with the lack of unions keeps wages down. This is especially true in new construction. You'll find very few American trades, including painters, on a new construction site and there's a reason for that.

That said, if you focus on doing remodeling work, especially on the higher end, you can do ok. That's the niche I've gotten into and have done allright. If you start your own business it'll take you awhile to network though and build up a clientele, especially in this economy. You may have to work for someone for awhile to pay the bills until you make some contacts. In the long run, you definitely need to be on your own down here if you're gonna make it though.

I hope this post wasn't too gloom and doom. I just want to paint a realistic picture (pun intended!) of what it's like for trades down here.

[TexasHorseLady]

Originally Posted by BJB817

One thing I'll warn you about being in the trades, you'll have a hard time getting the prices you're used to back north. There's LOTS of competition from the illegal crowd. That, coupled with the lack of unions keeps wages down. This is especially true in new construction. You'll find very few American trades, including painters, on a new construction site and there's a reason for that.

That said, if you focus on doing remodeling work, especially on the higher end, you can do ok. That's the niche I've gotten into and have done allright. If you start your own business it'll take you awhile to network though and build up a clientele, especially in this economy. You may have to work for someone for awhile to pay the bills until you make some contacts. In the long run, you definitely need to be on your own down here if you're gonna make it though.

I hope this post wasn't too gloom and doom. I just want to paint a realistic picture (pun intended!) of what it's like for trades down here.

This brings to mind a letter to the editor in the statesman that I read years ago. Seems the young man writing the letter had moved down here from a northern state, with unions, because all the companies that did his kind of work had had to close down. He was writing to complain that he couldn't get paid X (which was an enormous hourly salary which would afford a princely lifestyle in Austin at that time) down here and he blamed it on us not having unions who would keep those hourly rates up! Um, hello? Did you not just say that the companies that you worked for up north went out of business because the cost of doing business was prohibitive and they couldn't sell their products for what it cost them to pay people to produce them?