Some questions about Austin (Round Rock, Orange: apartment, house, job market)

[VeronikaW]

Greetings!

My husband and I are trying to find our place in the world. I am a CA native, and he grew up outside of Chicago. I've lived all over the US, but now that we have 3 children (3.5, 2.5, and 2 months), we're looking for some place to lay down roots and settle in for the long haul. The only thing we're 100% sure of, is that we're not staying in CA. We lived just outside of Seattle from 2007-2010. We moved back to CA last year to be closer to my family (huge mistake), and we're trying to decide where to go from here. We really liked the Seattle area, but it would be nice to live some place where the cost of living was a bit less.

I work from home, so I can live anywhere.

My husband currently works for Amazon (since 2007), but wouldn't mind something new.

So, here are my questions:

• What is the tech job market like in Austin?
• Are there any outer-lying suburbs/cities that are public transportation commutable into Austin?
• What are the suburbs that could be commuted from/to in 30-45 minutes? And which of these have the best schools?
• Does Texas have income tax?
• What are electricity prices like? We currently have a 1400 square foot apartment that costs us $250-350/month to cool in the summer.

Thanks for any and all info!

V. =)

[ImOnFiya]

I noticed that in your handle description you described yourself as "Washingtonian at heart". I don't think it probably took you very long to think of that phrase. I'd wager that would be your gut speaking (in favor of Seattle). Young lady, go where your heart leads you. Everything else will fall into place!

Good luck!

[VeronikaW]

Well, I did like the Seattle area quite a bit, but we're not sure overall if it's the place for us. We're looking for some place where I one day might get to be a full-time stay at home mom, and the cost of living in Seattle will never let that happen.

I'm just not sure where we're supposed to go. We're sort of on a scouting mission at this point, to see if the things that are important to us can be found in one location.

V. =)

[h886]

Originally Posted by VeronikaW

• What is the tech job market like in Austin?
• Are there any outer-lying suburbs/cities that are public transportation commutable into Austin?
• What are the suburbs that could be commuted from/to in 30-45 minutes? And which of these have the best schools?
• Does Texas have income tax?
• What are electricity prices like? We currently have a 1400 square foot apartment that costs us $250-350/month to cool in the summer.

Someone else will have to answer the specific "tech" questions. I think it depends exactly what he does and what sorts of skills he has. Can you be more specific?

Public transportation is very poor in Austin. The city is not well designed for it. It is nothing like they have in Seattle or CA. It is very unlikely that you would be able to live in the suburbs and have him commute to his job by public transportation, unless you were super lucky. For example, there is a train you could take from Leander to downtown. However, if your husband doesn't work close to that route, he would likely have to take several buses after that to get to work. For example, I live a 10 minute drive from work, 20 in traffic. To take public transportation to work takes me 2 hours each way and requires 3 bus changes.

It depends where he finds a job. The traffic in Austin is bad. You want to live as close to where you work as possible. You don't want to get excited about neighborhoods on the south side of town and then find out he got hired on the north side of town. Commuting nightmare. There are nice neighborhoods in the suburbs in most areas. The more expensive the neighborhood usually correlates to the better schools. What is your price range? Leander and Lake Travis have good public schools. Eanes has excellent public schools, but is the priciest place to live in general. Austin, Round Rock and Pflugerville all have some good schools and some so-so schools, again pretty much correlated with average housing price in the neighborhoods that feed them. You really need to think in terms of specific school, rather than district because most of the districts that fall within a reasonable commute of most places have some variation.

Texas does not have income tax. We do have high property tax. Your electric bill will depend on how efficient the house is, how large it is and how cool you want to keep it. Since it got up to 106 yesterday, this may not be the best time to ask that question . I shudder to think what mine will be.

[kiacook]

If you like Seattle you will not like Austin. No public transportation really, no ocean or sound, no mountains, no rain, no green. Primarily sun, heat and suburbs with that funky Austin vibe running through the city. If you decided to move here you would have to like the opposite of Seattle in terms of the ecosystem and city layout. And I would bet that you do it ONLY because of cost of living.

[cBach]

I love Austin but I tend to agree with the other posters. Although I love it here, you may not like it here. Also, if you spend $250 to cool a 1400 sqft home in CA with its mild climate, unless you live in the desert areas there, your bill would be much higher here. My bill in CA was less than $50 a month for the same sq ft as yours because of the mild climate.

[CptnRn]

My electric bill for a 2300 sf home, 2 retired adults, efficient 3 year old HVAC w/ gas heat, varied from a low of $67 to a high of $207 during the last year.

If you plan for it, living near where you work and along mass-transit routes, such as the new light rail coming into downtown Austin, you can get by a lot of the time with mass-transit.

[mark311]

Your description shows that you're in Aliso Viejo now. Does it really run you $350 per month to run A/C in Aliso Viejo being so close to the coast?

It sounds like you could adapt to living in the Austin area, but I understand why the other posters are trying to give you the negatives with the positives. Since you're in South Orange County, you can think of the Austin suburbs as more like the Temecula/Murrieta areas, but closer in and probably with better public schools overall. The weather will be similar in extremes to Temecula.

There aren't any income taxes, but property taxes will probably surprise you as being a higher percentage than you would expect. If I were you, I'd look very hard at areas like Red Hawk in Temecula and use that as your comparison to the Austin suburbs. Then you can visit here and take a look at a place like Steiner Ranch. It would probably offer everything that you want other than the public transportation of course. You'll also find that after property taxes, a comparable cookie cutter house in Steiner ranch with excellent schools isn't that much cheaper than a house in Temecula.

[VeronikaW]

Originally Posted by h886

Someone else will have to answer the specific "tech" questions. I think it depends exactly what he does and what sorts of skills he has. Can you be more specific?

He's currently working on the Amazon AppStore team. I know he's a software engineer. He's pretty much proficient in Java, C++, Perl, Ruby, he's had to wear a lot of hats at Amazon. He's definitely in the Senior Software Engineer category, and has worked on both back and front ends of the Amazon website.

Originally Posted by mark311

Your description shows that you're in Aliso Viejo now. Does it really run you $350 per month to run A/C in Aliso Viejo being so close to the coast?

It sounds like you could adapt to living in the Austin area, but I understand why the other posters are trying to give you the negatives with the positives. Since you're in South Orange County, you can think of the Austin suburbs as more like the Temecula/Murrieta areas, but closer in and probably with better public schools overall. The weather will be similar in extremes to Temecula.

There aren't any income taxes, but property taxes will probably surprise you as being a higher percentage than you would expect. If I were you, I'd look very hard at areas like Red Hawk in Temecula and use that as your comparison to the Austin suburbs. Then you can visit here and take a look at a place like Steiner Ranch. It would probably offer everything that you want other than the public transportation of course. You'll also find that after property taxes, a comparable cookie cutter house in Steiner ranch with excellent schools isn't that much cheaper than a house in Temecula.

Thanks! It's good to have a comparison in terms I understand. And yes, it can really run up to $350/month to cool our apartment, and that's with the A/C set at 73. Before kids I used to like it set at 68 in the summer, so I shudder to think what it would be if that were the case now. Our apartment isn't very energy efficient and the layout is such that if you turn on a single burner in the kitchen, half the house is heated up in a crazy manner.

I would totally live in Temecula (my parents used to live in Corona, very close to Temecula), except having my husband commute to Irvine from there is not going to happen. That, and we just want to be done with CA. Taxes and cost of living are bleeding us dry. Though Cost of Living in Temecula would be okay.

We have never owned a home, so we have no basis of comparison for property taxes, so that probably won't come as a huge shock to us. Our current budget for a home is around $400,000 (and we have almost 20% to put down at this point, and will have 20% by the time we're ready to buy next year), however, if we could find a home for less, that would be more than ideal.

Thanks everyone for all the advice. We definitely won't move somewhere without visiting first. We're just trying to figure out where we want to end up.

V. =)

[NakedApe]

Not that I know anything :-), but I've always heard that Portland is the affordable Seattle. No?