Moving to Houston, TX from India

[eyeye]

Sugar land and Missouri city have large India communities if that is important. Its also pretty affordable and is relatively safe depending on the neighborhood, of course.

[Foodie1980]

If you need access to Indian grocery stores, restaurants and the alike, Sugar Land has a large Indian population. It is a master-planned community with beautiful tree-lined streets, a white collar work force and plentiful of jobs in the area. Rents are pretty reasonable as well. Hillcroft and 59 (by Chinatown) also offers great access to Indian amenities but the area is not as safe.

I also know many Indian young professionals in the West University, Midtown and Montrose areas, now, that'll cost you substantially more. These are expensive neighborhoods and rents for one bedroom are probably in the ballpark of $1,200 - $2,000. If you work downtown/midtown for one of the energy companies, I would highly suggest to get an apartment or room up with someone close to town. Traffic is absolutely awful during rush hours. I'm using rush hours pretty loosely here since those hours seem to be ever expanding. I work as a physician consultant and travel to different sites, I can set my appointments around off hours but most people don't have that luxury.

[NOEL123]

How do you compare Sugarland and the woodlands since both of them are masterplan? How about their amenities, schools and traffic to downtown Houston? As we are thinking to move fro Philly to these areas. Thanks

[rjsin88]

Depending on what your budget is and what type of demographics you are comfortable living in. If you choose to live with your fellow Indians then you need to look into areas like Missouri City, Sugarland, Fortbend, Katy, or parts of Cypress. Obviously your budget matters and the location for your work.

[Foodie1980]

If you work downtown, either of those location will be at least an hour commute in the morning, unless you're a super early riser like my husband (3AM!). The southwest side of Houston is a lot more ethnically diverse than the woodlands, which it's very important to me. We chose to live downtown, our average commute is 15 minutes to most areas in the city and 30 to the burbs. Either Sugar Land, Woodlands, Clear Lake (by Nasa Space Center, esp if you like the water and sailing) and Katy offers good school district, they're all about 20-25 miles from center of town. We don't have kids so that's not our primary concern. The only decent school district within the loop would be West University (77005) or River Oaks (77098) but that would be at least $1M and up for a decent house. A Mandarin emersion school opened a few years ago in Bellaire, which belongs to Houston Independent school district on a lottery system, it is by I610 and Bissonnet and I've heard great reviews! I believe they have kindergarten - 8th grade at the moment. That's be my first choice since I'd like our children to grow up in a bilingual or multilingual environment.