Thinking about moving to Austin. (Houston, Spring: sales, apartment, mortgage)

[X-Tremo]

Hi all,

My company ofered me to go to Austin. The thing is that i know nothing about the area and so on.

I'm now living in Germany but i'm from Spain.

Any ideas/suggestions? Kind of lost here

Thanks for the help in advance.

Cheers.

[TexasHorseLady]

How about some more detailed questions? The one you ask is very broad and hard to answer.

As an example, are you looking for information about the climate, about the people, about housing, about what recreational activities there are here?

[X-Tremo]

Sorry for being so generic but i guess about the ppl, climate cannot get any colder than here and recreational activities would be a good idea too

Thanks!

The thing that scares me most is the ppl. I dont have a clue about how the people behave. Never been in States :S

[TexasHorseLady]

The climate will definitely not be colder! We're in the middle of a hot summer - there was a long string of record-breaking 100+ degree days.

The people are generally friendly, and live and let live (as long as you do likewise).

As far as recreation, what do you like to do?

[X-Tremo]

Well, that would be a problem i guess

I'm a lot into wather sports. I do almost all of them from surfing to dive, but i guess my chances to practice them there will be 0

humm i have to review my knowledge about the inches, pounds, miles etc xDDD

[Trainwreck20]

The important conversion is the C to F conversion. For the last month, it has been between 38 and 41 Celsius and almost no rain.

For water sports, there are a few options:
- If you mean scuba diving, then Lake Travis is a passable place to dive when the water is higher than it is now. Visibility near the surface is bad (first 8-10 m. or less), but below about 15 - 20 m., the visibility is pretty good for a lake. It is significantly colder (~18 C), though, so you will need a wetsuit down deep. Right now, due to drought, you can almost walk across the lake . There are a few other inland places to dive (Lake Amistad, Canyon Lake, Aquarina Springs), but you can also get down to Cozumel for a long weekend relatively cheap, and it is wonderful diving. About a 2.5 hour flight, although you can save a lot of money by driving to Houston and flying from there.

- Sail boarding is passable at the lake(s), along with water skiing, sailing, or (in the lower lakes) canoeing/kayaking. Several rivers that are decent for the same.

- For just plain swimming, there are a couple of natural swimming pools (to go along with the man-made ones) that are really nice in the summer months.

- Surfing is a little tougher. There are some days and some places along the Texas coast in which the surfers will appear, but I am not a surfer myself. I know before the big storms in late summer, there are groups of them braving the weather. The coast is at least 3.5 hours away, and can be 7+ hours away, depending on where you are heading.

Where from Spain are you originally? I have a co-worker from Barcelona (although she has been her for 20+ years now) and another that is Basque, although she has been her since she was a small child.

Things you may not be ready for:
- Public transportation is not nearly as prevelant and efficient, so you will probably need a car. There are buses that are actually generally on time and effective if you live central, but no so much outside of town, and you will hate standing in the heat waiting for them.
- Look at the tax situation. Are you a German or Spainish citizen? Will you have to pay income tax to a 'home' country? There is no state income tax in Texas, but the property taxes are high, so even living in an apartment you will be indirectly paying tax here (along with sales tax: 8.25% except on food and medicine). I am sure you are aware of federal income tax and whether you have to pay it or not.

Anyway, just the first things off the top of my head.

[iceshots]

If your company is moving you and sponsoring the working visa, they should also assign you a relocation adviser that should be able to answer a lot of these questions. In my case when we moved from Canada to Austin we did not get that much assistance from out relocation experts. I guess they figured ( and we did as well) that a Canada to US move would not be a big culture shock and we did not need a lot of help. Boy were we wrong.

If you are thinking about the moving over, here are some things to keep in mind.

1) Your credit rating in the US will be zero until you have been here for at least 6 months. Credit ratings do not transfer from country to country. You also do not want to keep using your EU based credit cards because you will be charged currency exchange fees on every purchase, and you will have the hassle of converting your US pay into Euros to pay the credit cards. One thing that saved us was the company had hooked us up with HSBC which had an international division. Were we able to open a US based account and get a US based credit card before we moved. That card is still the only significant credit line we have.

2) If you plan on buying a car when you get here you will run into the same credit hassle. Honda US woudl only let us finance a vehicle for up to 3 years which was the length of our initial working visa. They did not care that the company was already processing the green card applications.

3) Getting a mortgage for a house was another nightmare.

4) My daughter has been unable to get a Social Security Number issued to her because she is not allowed to work in the US. This made simple processes such as registering for school and getting her a bank account a more difficult process.

Throughout all of the above trials, the local people in Austin were great and many bent over backwards to help us and try to get our business. It was their financial head offices that caused the problems. So look into getting US credit set up BEFORE you make the move.

I think you would like Austin even if it does not have the range of water sports you are used to doing. A colleague of mine recently emigrated here from Germany, and our administrator is also a German ex-pat. They both like the city and lifestyle over here.

Good Luck