Where do most Dell Round Rock Employees live? (Austin, Cedar Park: apartment, lease)

[vzgblues]

I accepted an offer from Dell and will be working in Round Rock. We have one toddler 2 year old. Husband works from home. We are looking for good ISD, close to shopping, good views (hills rather than lakes) and decent commute time to work as I hear Dell offers flexible WFH schedules. Cedar Park, Brushy Creek, Round Rock seem like closer to work, but homes are much smaller and flat terrain. Leander looks pretty and Drees, Toll, Taylor Marrison all seem to have beautiful homes up there but commute and distance from shopping seems like too much. We are moving from a small town in the South where everything is right there. We lived in CA San Jose for a long time too, and everything was right there. We can go upto 7-800K and are looking for 4 bed 4 bath homes. Anything come to mind? Thanks in advance for your help.

[Antny12]

I live in Leander and I work at dell occasionally.. take some no more then 15 minutes on a bad day using the toll. If you don’t mind getting a tx-tag and using the toll then it’s easy as can be. 183A to 45 east and it’s right off of the highway.

If you didn’t want to take a toll it’s not the worst.. but it’s a little longer. 2243 or 1431 all the way down to the 35 depending on where in Leander you bought.

[centralaustinite]

Look harder at Round Rock! There are great homes there, the schools are solid, and convenient to anything one could need!

[Austin97]

For your budget, I would either live close to dell and only spend about 500K or I would live closer to central austin and do a reverse commute to dell. The idea would be that if you switch jobs you will be well positioned to work in many more locations.

How many square feet are you looking for? what age of home?

[austinnerd]

Consider NW Austin (south of Anderson Mill, e.g. Anderson Mill Estates), several older more established neighborhoods and you can relatively quickly pop onto 45 and be at Dell RR in minutes. They feed into some of the most desirable schools in the area (e.g. Spicewood Elem, Canyon Vista MS, Westwood HS). Relatively close to shopping, etc.

Plus you'd be a bit more centralized vs some of the other options you're looking at so if you did switch jobs in the future you have a higher probability of still being in a reasonable spot commute wise.

[timfountain]

Originally Posted by Austin97

For your budget, I would either live close to dell and only spend about 500K or I would live closer to central austin and do a reverse commute to dell. The idea would be that if you switch jobs you will be well positioned to work in many more locations.

How many square feet are you looking for? what age of home?

The problem is that the reverse commute is a mythical unicorn. So many people do it, traffic is bad in rush hour in all directions....

[lemonegg]

Originally Posted by timfountain

The problem is that the reverse commute is a mythical unicorn. So many people do it, traffic is bad in rush hour in all directions....

Exactly. Years ago I moved to Austin to take a new job. I took an apartment near Parmer Lane with plans to buy a house when the lease was up. Even though my job was near 290, I decided to say north. Then one day I was driving home on route 1, I had a epiphany. The northbound traffic was at a crawl, and so was the southbound. I looked around realizing it was insane to live north when my work was south.

My advise is to stay close to your job. The traffic in Austin is just crazy.

[Austin97]

Originally Posted by timfountain

The problem is that the reverse commute is a mythical unicorn. So many people do it, traffic is bad in rush hour in all directions....

You can use google's depart at functionality to see it isnt true.

For example:
domain dr to dell at 8am is 10-16 minutes. Dell to domain drive at 8am is 20-40 minutes.
great hills country club to dell at 8am is 16-26 minutes, dell to great hills country club is 24-40 minutes

There simply arent that many jobs up in round rock that people would commute to.

[Austin97]

Originally Posted by lemonegg

Exactly. Years ago I moved to Austin to take a new job. I took an apartment near Parmer Lane with plans to buy a house when the lease was up. Even though my job was near 290, I decided to say north. Then one day I was driving home on route 1, I had a epiphany. The northbound traffic was at a crawl, and so was the southbound. I looked around realizing it was insane to live north when my work was south.

My advise is to stay close to your job. The traffic in Austin is just crazy.

what you are describing is not a reverse commute because you have to cross the river. There is no reverse commute crossing the river. There is a reverse commute going to round rock.

[ashbeeigh]

I have friends that live off MLK and work at Dell. They don't mind it and they have a one year old. Maybe when she gets closer to school age they'll move to a better area, but for now they are very happy in central east Austin and driving to RR.