Commute to Fort Worth downtown (Austin, Flower Mound: rent, high crime, houses)

[Melonppan]

Moving to DFW from Austin, don’t know much of DFW. Any help and insight would be greatly appreciated.

Work is Fort Worth downtown, looking at Flower Mound to reside. Google map is telling me 31 miles/35 mins via 1171 to 35W. Is this pretty congested 30 mile commute? Will be commuting daily 7am-5pm unless telework is going to here for a while.

[tcualum]

Why are you looking at Flower Mound? That won't be a good commute at all.

[ChristieP]

FloMo to downtown Fort Worth is going to be awful. I used to commute from Grapevine to Burnett Plaza in downtown, and it was 30 minutes on a really good day. You’d likely be looking at close to an hour since Flower Mound is further north than Grapevine, and southbound traffic out of Flower Mound on 121 and 114 is extremely heavy. If you’re working in downtown Fort Worth, you need to look in Tarrant, Parker or Johnson counties.

What’s your budget for housing?
Are schools important?

[Melonppan]

Friend of mine recommended flower mound as excellent place to live and few specifics:

1.Commutable to Fort Worth downtown. I was thinking to commute west on 1171 to 35W to downtown Fort Worth. Is this not preferred route?
2. Excellent schools (been only hearing Carroll ISD)...
3. Property tax is lower in west flower mound?

School is important, I have two grade level kids.

Budget for buying is 500-600k. Also considering rent as first year option under 4K.

Thank you for your input

[ChristieP]

Flower Mound is a great place to live if you’re commuting to Las Colinas or DFW Airport every day. Beyond that, it can be a long drive to most employment areas.

That’s not going to be a good commute. 1171 through Flower Mound is a city street with slow speed limits, stoplights and school zones. I35W southbound is a parking lot from Keller south all the way to downtown. (Keller, Haslet and north Fort Worth are hot housing areas, and this creates a lot of traffic.)

There are many excellent school districts in NE Tarrant County. Carroll ISD is certainly the flagship, but Grapevine-Colleyville ISD is right behind it. Keller ISD is also very well-regraded in certain feeder areas.

What you’re describing to me is Colleyville. Your budget would buy a nice house, possibly even one that’s fairly new, and the schools are excellent. You’ll be surrounded by families similar to yours. Property taxes are mid-range, and certainly lower than Fort Worth. You could also look in Grapevine, which has the second-lowest tax rate in Tarrant County, although your price range is on the high end. There is also a small piece of Grapevine north of 114 that is zoned to Carroll ISD. Houses in that neighborhood tend to go quickly so you’d have to act fast.

[jbb303]

Commute time is a matter of personal preference and you're the only one that can determine if it's doable as long as you know what you're getting into. That said, I'm betting you would be looking at 2-3 hours a day in your vehicle and that's no quality of life. If you're coming into it from somewhere like Southern California or New Jersey or DC, that kind of commute might sound like a dream, but around here, that would be pretty miserable, especially in the heat of summer or the parts of the year where you're going to be doing both ends of it in the dark.

Most of Carroll ISD is going to be above your price range and you'll see a lot of houses higher than that in Colleyville. At your budget, you should still have little problem finding something with good schools.

[4Movingeast]

I second the recommendation of Colleyville. Targeting areas with easy access to the toll road will shave minutes off your commute as well, but you don't have to use them.

We moved here to Colleyville 5 years ago and are happy with our choice. I do wonder sometimes if we should have looked harder at Birdville ISD which has/had more homes in our price range. We lucked out and found exactly what we wanted but your price range is more than we wanted to spend although were approved up to that amount.

Not knowing any of your particulars other than commute and good schools, I wouldn't rule out a look. I will say many of the homes in the 500K price range will not have the updates you might assume they would have in Colleyville.

[Melonppan]

Currently commute is 45 mins going from north Austin towards downtown Austin. I hope Fort Worth traffic isn’t bad as Austin. Surprised to hear 2-3 hours a day for commute for 20-30 miles in Fort Worth....

I’m aware of Carroll ISD boundary, thx for reminding this ChristieP.

[ChristieP]

The hard thing about Fort Worth is that with only a few exceptions (south and southwest) the parts of Fort Worth that are within the 820 loop have bad schools and fairly high crime. So, people with your priorities end up having to drive a fairly long way to work, or get into bidding wars over the few acceptable properties in town.

Anywhere there’s a highway interchange will be a significant slowdown in traffic. From Flower Mound, that’s the DFW Connectpr on the north side of DFW, the 183/121 interchange, the 121/183/820 interchange, and the 35W/121 interchange. When considering your commute, keep the interchanges to a minimum.

[jbb303]

The problem with Flower Mound to Fort Worth is that the all-freeway direction through Grapevine and HEB likely results in some backtracking the wrong direction and the straight shot involves a road with a lot of stops and a lot of traffic and a vastly undersized freeway.