For anyone looking to move to Dallas because it is "cheap" (Houston: sales, apartment)

[talkispoison]

check out this
The 11 Most Expensive Cities In America (PHOTOS)

[Plateau]

How could Austin not be on that list?

[DaveG99]

Are the people who made that list idiots? I could name 100 more expensive cities. And they say Dallas has high utilities costs? I pay 9 cents per kilowatt. Morons.

[jelf]

Yeah, definitely not cheap. But much cheaper than the three larger metro areas (New York, LA, Chicago). It ends up being cheap if you can earn a salary similar to what you could earn in those three metros (such as 160k for a mega law firm, for example). One couldn't generally earn that kind of salary in a truly cheap area.

[racehorse]

I can't believe Dallas is #11. That makes no sense to me at all.

[Texas Mack]

The average rent for a two-bedroom apartment in Houston is $1800? LMAO. I'm going to assume that the data used for these rankings are incomplete at best.

[pappy97]

Originally Posted by DaveG99

Are the people who made that list idiots? I could name 100 more expensive cities. And they say Dallas has high utilities costs? I pay 9 cents per kilowatt. Morons.

I could name 100 more expensive cities, but obviously when they say high utility cost they don't mean per kilowatt, they mean total. With the horrible summers (And then a couple weeks of freak winter weather), costs are high. You use thousands of kilowatts. I think that's the point. I pay 7.7 cents per kilowatt here, and paid more in CA. However it would have cost less to heat/cool a 3700 sq ft in SF Bay Area, California than my 3700 sq. ft home here because of the weather. Monthly (most months) and definitely yearly more cash comes out of my pocket here to pay electricity.

I DON'T think that makes Dallas the 11th most expensive city to live in the US, BUT there is a point that people spend a lot on electricity per month especially in June/July/August/September and whatever month ends up having the freak winter week (January or February usually).

Hell if we are going on utility costs and how much you need to spend monthly/yearly, Phoenix should be there easily. Even the hotter parts of California would/could beat out Dallas.

[Grainraiser]

Originally Posted by Texas Mack

The average rent for a two-bedroom apartment in Houston is $1800? LMAO. I'm going to assume that the data used for these rankings are incomplete at best.

That list is as bogus as can be. Most folks don't pay $1800 for a mortgage.

[TurtleCreek80]

Originally Posted by Grainraiser

That list is as bogus as can be. Most folks don't pay $1800 for a mortgage.

The list is bogus because there was no consistent data measured for all cities- each city was "cherry picked" for one stat or another.

That being said, Dallas IS a lot more expensive than most relo's anticipate:
-sky high auto insurance due to so many uninsured motorists
-very high home insurance rates
- very high property tax rates to off-set no income tax and to support county hospitals where hundreds of thousands of uninsured Dallasites use the ER as a common doctor's office and to support schools with many illegal students whose parents don't pay taxes into the system
-very high sales tax to off-set no income tax
-high electricity usage due to needing a/c from May-Sept
-high health insurance rates for many companies/employees due to high health insurance costs (lawsuits & illegals using those county ER's)
-high toll rates on the growing number of tollroads- and going up another +6% this weekend

DFW is a great place to live, but it's not without it's own set of problems and costs- whether monetary (taxes, insurance, etc) or time (the 60 minute commute from the affordable suburb with good schools into the city). To get a good school district in the city will cost a minimum of $300k up to $800k for the smallest family homes in the good in-town school districts & zones. That's not cheap- and fairly comparable to all other major cities outside the few super expensive ones like NYC, San Fran, and DC.

[Grainraiser]

Originally Posted by TurtleCreek80

The list is bogus because there was no consistent data measured for all cities- each city was "cherry picked" for one stat or another.

That being said, Dallas IS a lot more expensive than most relo's anticipate:
-sky high auto insurance due to so many uninsured motorists
-very high home insurance rates
- very high property tax rates to off-set no income tax and to support county hospitals where hundreds of thousands of uninsured Dallasites use the ER as a common doctor's office and to support schools with many illegal students whose parents don't pay taxes into the system
-very high sales tax to off-set no income tax
-high electricity usage due to needing a/c from May-Sept
-high health insurance rates for many companies/employees due to high health insurance costs (lawsuits & illegals using those county ER's)
-high toll rates on the growing number of tollroads- and going up another +6% this weekend

DFW is a great place to live, but it's not without it's own set of problems and costs- whether monetary (taxes, insurance, etc) or time (the 60 minute commute from the affordable suburb with good schools into the city). To get a good school district in the city will cost a minimum of $300k up to $800k for the smallest family homes in the good in-town school districts & zones. That's not cheap- and fairly comparable to all other major cities outside the few super expensive ones like NYC, San Fran, and DC.

So true, when I think of living in Dallas I think more of living in the DFW area. Living in the city proper is alot more expensive than most would realize. I would love to live in the city limits but for my budget there are not many nice neighborhoods I could call home.