Offered jobs in both Austin and Nashville, which one is best for families? (Houston: real estate, insurance)

[BuddhaBlue]

Originally Posted by COCUE

Perhaps it would be helpful to define what a good school means to you using publicly available ratings such as greatschools or similar. That way, people could check out what you mean and share their recommendations.

To me a good school for instance is a school that is at least rated 7 out 10 according to greatschools or at least "recognized" in the former Texas school rating system. Of course, one looks beyond ratings when evaluating school but thats as good a start as any. We moved to Austin some 2 years ago. For us, we found the whole Austin and environs full of what we considered "good schools across all 3 levels of education. The main school districts here that we looked at were Austin ISD, Round Rock ISD, Leander ISD, Lake Travis ISD and West Lake ISD. All these have way too many schools rated 7 and above. That to us was awesome and then coupled with the fact that you didnt have to live in a million dollar home for your child to attend any of these schools.

You mileage may well vary.. Good luck all the same

This is very informative. I tend to take GreatSchools rankings with a grain of salt because the overall score is somewhat subjective with parent reviews being taken into consideration. I'm mostly looking at the actual test scores. Round Rock seems like a nice place due to the fact that is has some schools that perform well on testing and it is also an area with a lot of professionals living there. Mostly tech based if I'm not mistaken, which is desirable.

[Being There]

The Nashville taxes are much cheaper. Your kids will learn or wont learn regardless. I have friends that just moved from the Red Oak hood in Cedar Park to the Clarksville TN area because of the taxes. They were paying 15k in CP about 5k now with 10 acres too.

[BuddhaBlue]

Originally Posted by hound 109

Huh?

75% of what? 65% of what?

I don't know when your children were in school, but today, schools are ranked based upon their performance in standardized testing. If schools do not perform well on these tests, they are ranked low, and if they perform well, they are ranked higher. In Illinois, schools are heavily sanctioned if they do not perform well of testing, and if they fail to produce consistently higher test scores each year. So even if a school reaches test scores in the 90th percentile in 2015, their rank will drop, and they will be sanctioned, if they do not score higher than that in 2016. There are many schools in our area that reach 100% on test scores.

[AMJ27]

What impressed you about Eanes? Test scores? That isn't everything. We considered it when we moved here (we could have bought in at the low end of Eanes with the top of our price limit at that point) and we decided against it for many reasons. As my kids have grown older, I feel even more secure about our decision.

We moved here 6 years ago from one of the better school districts in the Chicago suburbs. We chose a very specific track of AISD (shudder!) and could not have been happier. Our experience with our kids in IL was at the elementary level (although I was a student in that district in the stone ages) and we were shocked at the rigor of instruction in AISD. Class sizes are significantly smaller too. If you decide on Austin and schools are a priority, I highly recommend that you do more research on the different school options in the Austin area. There are many good-excellent options besides Eanes.

Just a couple other Chicago vs. Austin thoughts. Traffic...it's not great for a city this size, but I tend to disagree with a lot of people on this board about how bad it really is. It really is not bad at all compared to Chicago traffic.

Property tax is pretty comparable, but you don't have income tax so that is your tax break by moving to Texas. However, utilities and homeowners insurance are significantly more expensive, so keep that in mind. Also, social services are much, much lower than Illinois.

I understand what you said about being used to long commutes, but I looked up Harker Heights on a map (I had never heard of it before) and even I think that would be an irritating commute. It would be the equivilant of commuting to Milwaukee or Rockford from the Chicagoland area. It's doable, but not ideal. If you decide on Austin, Georgetown would really make the most sense. It's more or less considered to be in the Austin metro area, but it would position you much better to your husband's job. I haven't spent any time there, but I've heard many say that it is charming.

[BuddhaBlue]

Originally Posted by Being There

The Nashville taxes are much cheaper. Your kids will learn or wont learn regardless. I have friends that just moved from the Red Oak hood in Cedar Park to the Clarksville TN area because of the taxes. They were paying 15k in CP about 5k now with 10 acres too.

I know, you can own so much more in and around Nashville for a fraction of the cost. Nashville is a cute city too, really laid back. That and they have Vanderbilt. My father and two of my siblings went to Northwestern, and my father, mother, and one of those siblings also works for Northwestern. I have always heard that Vanderbilt and Northwestern are very similar.

[BuddhaBlue]

Originally Posted by AMJ27

What impressed you about Eanes? Test scores? That isn't everything. We considered it when we moved here (we could have bought in at the low end of Eanes with the top of our price limit at that point) and we decided against it for many reasons. As my kids have grown older, I feel even more secure about our decision.

We moved here 6 years ago from one of the better school districts in the Chicago suburbs. We chose a very specific track of AISD (shudder!) and could not have been happier. Our experience with our kids in IL was at the elementary level (although I was a student in that district in the stone ages) and we were shocked at the rigor of instruction in AISD. Class sizes are significantly smaller too. If you decide on Austin and schools are a priority, I highly recommend that you do more research on the different school options in the Austin area. There are many good-excellent options besides Eanes.

Just a couple other Chicago vs. Austin thoughts. Traffic...it's not great for a city this size, but I tend to disagree with a lot of people on this board about how bad it really is. It really is not bad at all compared to Chicago traffic.

Property tax is pretty comparable, but you don't have income tax so that is your tax break by moving to Texas. However, utilities and homeowners insurance are significantly more expensive, so keep that in mind. Also, social services are much, much lower than Illinois.

I understand what you said about being used to long commutes, but I looked up Harker Heights on a map (I had never heard of it before) and even I think that would be an irritating commute. It would be the equivilant of commuting to Milwaukee or Rockford from the Chicagoland area. It's doable, but not ideal. If you decide on Austin, Georgetown would really make the most sense. It's more or less considered to be in the Austin metro area, but it would position you much better to your husband's job. I haven't spent any time there, but I've heard many say that it is charming.

This is extremely informative, thank you. Speaking of utilities, how much of those costs eat into your monthly expenses, especially during the summer months? For instance, we pay around $150 per month on electricity during the summer months with the air conditioning on full blast. Again, in a home around 1800 sf. How much would that cost in the Austin area? Thanks!

[Antny12]

We moved here from the southwest Chicago suburbs to Leander and couldn't be happier. Schools here are just as good as they are back in Chicago. The demographics here are also different then in many of the Chicago burbs. I'm sure this also has an impact too. In general there's many really good options here from top to bottom that are great options. Leander alone has 3 high schools including one that just opened this year. Cedar park has 2 great schools.. Westwood, vandergrift as well.

Tennessee is nice too.. We liked Franklin but now that we are here we don't see ourselves leaving ever. But there's pros and cons to both as with anything.

If I were in your shoes and your seriously considering Austin area id highly recommend looking into Georgetown, Leander, Cedar park, and liberty hill areas. All have good schools, plenty of things to do, Great shopping, growing fast, nice homes in all price ranges, newer subdivisions all over or there are plenty of homes that you can get some land, good schools, and so on.

[AMJ27]

Originally Posted by BuddhaBlue

This is extremely informative, thank you. Speaking of utilities, how much of those costs eat into your monthly expenses, especially during the summer months? For instance, we pay around $150 per month on electricity during the summer months with the air conditioning on full blast. Again, in a home around 1800 sf. How much would that cost in the Austin area? Thanks!

It depends on the efficiency and age of your HVAC. We have a 3500+ sf house. Before we replaced our aging units, it was $450-500 during the really hot summer months. With new efficient units, it was around $275 for the highest bill this summer. Keep in mind though that you don't have high heating bills in the winter.

Water is very expensive. Our normal water, trash, sewer bill in IL was about $75 a month. Without using our sprinklers, it's about $180 here. With sprinklers, it's in the $300s.

The biggest shock to us was homeowners insurance. I think we paid $500-600 a year before we moved here. We started around $1500 when we moved in and it's inched up to close to $2500. It is a pretty Gucci policy, but still...

Also, the heat takes a beating on things like roofs and HVAC. They have a much shorter life expectancy than they do up north.

[Antny12]

We have a 2000sqft house in Leander and our Eletric is typically $100-$150 but in the summer can be $180-$250. We have had the air running since April and just got a new ac unit recently.

[COCUE]

Originally Posted by BuddhaBlue

This is very informative. I tend to take GreatSchools rankings with a grain of salt because the overall score is somewhat subjective with parent reviews being taken into consideration. I'm mostly looking at the actual test scores. Round Rock seems like a nice place due to the fact that is has some schools that perform well on testing and it is also an area with a lot of professionals living there. Mostly tech based if I'm not mistaken, which is desirable.

That is true of greatschools and similar. However i have found that their ratings are highly correlated with actual test scores i.e. a greatschool 10 rated school is highly likely to also have great to excellent test scores and vice versa. Out of curiosity, I just searched Killeen ISD on great schools and of the 32 or so elementary schools that had an associated rating, 13 of them were 7 and over. Thats way more than enough "good schools" in the area IMHO. Again, even using TEA scores, the number of good to great schools in the Austin area are pretty high.