Moving to Texas from Chicago (Houston, Dallas: for rent, crime, mortgage)

[butterflymek1]

Hello I am a single mother of three looking to relocate to Texas. can someone give me information on a nice city to move to. Info on schools, crime,jobs and any other information would be of great help.

[RSTX]

Your question is really too general to answer with any specifics. Do you want to live in a large metro area, a midsize city or a small town? Every parent wants the "best" schools. That is a subjective description. Best for one child may be worst for another. Crime is everywhere and nowhere. There is less crime in a small town than a large city, but you probably know that. Jobs are also everywhere. What do you want to do?

You need to provide some parameters before we can give you answers.

Having been to Chicago (my sister lived on Ohio just one block off Lake Shore Dr near Navy Pier) I would say that Dallas would be the closest city we have to Chicago. You may want the opposite of what you have now. Let us know.

[jluyka]

I was born and raised in Chicago and moved to Hoffman Estates last summer with my family. I am moving to Laredo, TX this summer! I did a lot of my research on this site, realtor.com, rentnet.com, schoolmatters.com, Moderator cut: linking to competitors sites is not allowed and random Internet searches on the Internet. There is a lot of information on the Internet, you just have to be resourceful. Good Luck!

[KerrTown]

Originally Posted by RSTX

I would say that Dallas would be the closest city we have to Chicago.

Actually Houston is closer in attitude and layout to Chicago.

See: http://houstonstrategies.blogspot.co...r-brother.html. I got this when I typed Houston Chicago similarities into Google. It was also the first site on the search. If you want to stay in the big-city come to Houston!

The attitude description is on that site. The layout is similar to Chicago because Houston has a grid system but with wide throughfares with medians. It is also much denser and more urban/cosmopolitan than DFW. There is a museum district here with many museums covering different topics. Dallas museums consists of the Dallas Museum of Art, the soon to be built Nasher Center, and the NorthPark shopping mall (modern art in a shopping mall). Don't even come to the state fair. The fairgrounds are an embarassment to TEXAS since the fair buildings are run down and the neighborhood is a ghetto.

For luxury shopping just drive to THE Galleria in Houston. The other Galleria copy, NorthPark Mall, and Highland Village are the luxury malls in DFW. The catch is that you have to drive around to shop.

Dallas has that flagship Neiman Marcus in Downtown Dallas but it and the surrounding downtown is empty in the middle of the day. (Most offices are in the suburbs! No wonder that the Dallas Morning News featured an article: Is Dallas the next Detroit? Is that why Comerica bank moved there?) But who could afford that store? Houston has a more affordable store in Downtown--a Macy's on Main Street--the only traditional mid-market department store in the south. Foley's was our version of Marshall Field's. In 1987, Sanger-Harris, the mid-market department store in Dallas was merged into and renamed Foley's. Some long-time Dallasites are still p*ssed. The downtown Dallas store closed soon after leaving Neiman-Marcus alone in Downtown Dallas.

Many Chicagoans and New Yorkers have mostly relocated here to Houston. The 3 most common license plates I have seen are California, Illinois, and New York.

DFW is more of an L.A. layout with a S.F. feel. It is more sprawly, very suburban, and has a L.A. style freeway footprint.

Unlike Illinois, Texas is not dominated by one city. Although I wish it was the same here also with Houston dominating Texas with its state captial and being the only big city. But there are also no major cities around Houston whereas IH-35 strings together DFW with SA, Austin, and Waco.

Texas is very big so there are alot of cities to choose that suit your lifestyle.
If you are tired of the big-city, try our other cities like San Antonio, Waco, Lubbock, Amarillo, San Angelo, Corpus Christi, Midland-Odessa, or El Paso.

[slaleman]

Originally Posted by butterflymek1

Hello I am a single mother of three looking to relocate to Texas. can someone give me information on a nice city to move to. Info on schools, crime,jobs and any other information would be of great help.

If you want to own your own home, I'd say San Antonio. My wife and I moved from Oak Park back to San Antonio because of the cost of living. We paid less for our first mortgage in San Antonio than we were paying for rent in Oak Park and we didn't have to pay to park on the street!

If you need info on the other things, I'd suggest checking out the city forums of the places you're considering moving to.

Just know that SA doesn't have a transit system like Chicago. Actually, no city in Texas does. You can probably get by without a car in Dallas, maybe Houston, but it's nothing like the CTA.

[Diamond Dee]

I think the west texas area would be a good chioce but only because I used to live their.