Are the relos moving to Austin some of the least grounded/established in the areas they are coming from? (Round Rock: apartments, renter)

[inthecut]

Originally Posted by mimimomx3

Yes.

Most people who move to Austin are moving to the suburbs- and our suburbs are pretty much like everyone else's. In my opinion, we have awesome PR to attract people to our suburbs rather than, say, Dallas.

Interesting.....true, because all the growth is either on the peripery of the city itself, or in the burbs.....and perhaps that is why those like myself feel letdown when they see most of Austin is no different than the generica they moved away from......I moved to the central city after my first year lease on the NW Austin outskirts, and could not muster any reason at all to venture out of the central/south region.....I can honestly say there is almost nothing there that would interest me other than RR express baseball in the summer....

The ultimate PR? Cedar Park appearing as the best place to live in the USA......the place is generica incarnate, with really bad local traffic, and poor access to freeways to go into the city....I would love to hire CP's PR agents......what a wonderful job they did getting CP at the top of the lists.......

[inthecut]

Originally Posted by orbius

Same thing happened to California when it was growing. There were industrial jobs available in the NE back then but a lot of people were willing to do menial work in California and live in a nice/vibrant/sunny place.

Austin has great outdoors recreation, sunny weather, a youthful attitude, and is not polluted or ugly.

With a huge amount of the country in flux its not surprising a lot of people are moving here.

And what happened when the critical mass of people caused Cal to jump the shark? Simply far too many people moved there, and the mass of illegals and unskilled migrants finished it off......it was gone long before the Rodney King riots.......

Now Austin is prepped to jump that same growth shark, ironically with many people fleeing California itself.....go figure.....

History repeats itself...

[Nor Cal Wahine]

Originally Posted by inthecut

those like myself feel letdown when they see most of Austin is no different than the generica they moved away from.

This ... this explains a LOT. Perhaps it's your disenchanted view of Austin that compels you to write tomes on the subject here. I don't know that you will ever find the answers that you seek, or if you're even looking for an answer at all ... but at least now I know why you devote so much time to the subject.

[orbius]

Well plenty of people choose to live in Round Rock when they could live in Austin. Some people like the endless strip malls, the theme restaurants, and the outlet shopping with a large house in a cookie cutter neighborhood. Each to their own!
Dont forget a lot of people are moving from terrible, polluted, crumbling, industrial cities. In that light Round Rock(and Cedar Park) look like some kind of shining jewel. We're kind of spoiled around here in that regards.

[HappyTexan]

Once you leave the city limits (of any of the cities) and start entering the urban sprawl areas they are all cookie cutter. Subdivision after subdivision separated by big box and chains and strip malls.
No individuality, no uniqueness. They all look alike.

[cheekymamie]

My hubby and I are hoping to relo to either the Austin or Dallas area ( we currently live in Southern California) and we're visiting Austin next weekend. To answer the OP's question, we are an upper-middle class family with 3 kids. DH earns a six figure salary and I'm a SAHM. We live in a small 1950's ranch house near the beach and have all of our family and friends here, but even with the housing bust, prices never really got low enough here on the SoCal coast. The next home up for our family (at least 2,000 sq. feet) and decently remodeled, would be in the 750k+ range and these homes were 1.2 million at the peek of the boom. At that price, even with an income over $100k, we would still be living on a tight budget. We have horrible public schools here, pollution, etc. We're hoping to find our little slice of heaven somewhere, where a bigger house won't require us to both slave away for the next 30 years to pay the mortgage, we would love a neighborhood with lots of other children and great schools, etc. Without having visited Austin yet, I think the only issue that may deter us from moving there are jobs, Dallas seems to have more of them at similar salaries to what my DH can earn in Cali.

[austin-steve]

Originally Posted by cheekymamie

My hubby and I are hoping to relo to either the Austin or Dallas area ( we currently live in Southern California) and we're visiting Austin next weekend. To answer the OP's question, we are an upper-middle class family with 3 kids. DH earns a six figure salary and I'm a SAHM. We live in a small 1950's ranch house near the beach and have all of our family and friends here, but even with the housing bust, prices never really got low enough here on the SoCal coast. The next home up for our family (at least 2,000 sq. feet) and decently remodeled, would be in the 750k+ range and these homes were 1.2 million at the peek of the boom. At that price, even with an income over $100k, we would still be living on a tight budget. We have horrible public schools here, pollution, etc. We're hoping to find our little slice of heaven somewhere, where a bigger house won't require us to both slave away for the next 30 years to pay the mortgage, we would love a neighborhood with lots of other children and great schools, etc. Without having visited Austin yet, I think the only issue that may deter us from moving there are jobs, Dallas seems to have more of them at similar salaries to what my DH can earn in Cali.

Another perfect testimonial. You can find a beautiful 2000+ sqft home in Austin with great schools and really nice, friendly neighbors for $1 to $1.30 per sqft (or about $200K to $260K in a neighborhood such as Villages of Western Oaks in SW Austin). Even cheaper if you get up into Leander, Round Rock, Cedar Park. I grew up in San Diego, and it is beautiful, but over priced.

Texas gets it right. We don't try to be everybody's Daddy, and tax the heck out of our businesses and employees. Yes we score low in many public services, but so what? California scores real high in government aid and assistance and look what the end result is?

Come on in. The water's great. And it's a perfect time to invest in a home with 4.87% interest plus the $8K tax rebate.

Steve

[inthecut]

Originally Posted by orbius

Well plenty of people choose to live in Round Rock when they could live in Austin. Some people like the endless strip malls, the theme restaurants, and the outlet shopping with a large house in a cookie cutter neighborhood. Each to their own!
Dont forget a lot of people are moving from terrible, polluted, crumbling, industrial cities. In that light Round Rock(and Cedar Park) look like some kind of shining jewel. We're kind of spoiled around here in that regards.

Congrats for describing nondescript, polluting periphery sprawl as a "shining jewel"......the developers owe you one.....and only those from inner city urban blight such as Detroit could possibly see masses of ticky tacky, poorly made retail and residential as such.......

Sad day when the developers idea of what we want becomes charming and a jewel, but that is probably where we have come to.....

[traceyr13]

I relocated to Austin in June 2006 from Rhode Island...didn't know anyone local (had friends in other parts of Texas), got a job the week AFTER I moved, and my husband got a job 1 month before we moved (when we had already made the decision to move and had our house on the market). At the time, we were in our early 30s with 3 kids, and were both doing extremely well professionally - I had tenure at a fantastic public school, and he was making an extremely good living as a litigation director in Providence.

Combined, we took a 30k pay cut with our new jobs (same jobs - I taught, he worked as a litigation director in Austin). So, I think your hypothesis was incorrect for us - we are educated, fairly upper middle class, had good jobs in RI and owned a home, and all of our families (both sides) is still back in New England. While we had friends, they weren't incredibly close or great friends, so yes, I guess our social network wasn't incredibly strong, but we certainly weren't outcasts.

We made the decision to move from Austin to Dallas this past summer for very different reasons - I have a circle of incredibly close friends here in Dallas and I got a fantastic job opportunity at a private school in Dallas. We've been here for 4 months and I'm much happier in Dallas (but that's not an Austin vs Dallas thing, but a life situation things for us).

Anyway - I think people relocate for a wide variety of reasons, and you can't really generalize.

[orbius]

Originally Posted by inthecut

Congrats for describing nondescript, polluting periphery sprawl as a "shining jewel"......the developers owe you one.....and only those from inner city urban blight such as Detroit could possibly see masses of ticky tacky, poorly made retail and residential as such.......

Sad day when the developers idea of what we want becomes charming and a jewel, but that is probably where we have come to.....

I'm just saying a lot of people in other parts of the country live in a run down suburb with aging malls and crime. A clean, and new development like those in Round Rock looks nice to them.
People in the area are often downright hostile to places like Round Rock *cough*. But thats only because they personally dont like it and live in Austin.
Many people like Round Rock.