Thinking about moving to San Antonio from Austin... (Mission, Spur: transplants, to rent)

[Danimarie]

We're a family of 6. We have 4 small children and are trying to find the best place to raise our family for the money. We moved to Austin from up north a year and a half ago for a job opportunity. My husband is already close to the top of his pay range working for the City of Austin. He's about to go permanent with them after being with them for around 6 months. The job is fine, but the housing costs here are horrible and the prices just keep rising. And traffic is horrible too.

My husband specializes in Civil 3D(civil engineering) type work. He's actually doing really well with it and I believe he could find a job pretty easily in most bigger cities if given enough time.
We are conservative and homeschool our kids. So, we really are just looking for a more reasonable place to live for the money.

We have visited San Antonio a couple of times and enjoyed it. I appreciate that there are more historical places to see and places to take the kids around for "field trips."

So, do you think San Antonio might be the place for us? Any more info you could share with me about the area? Good threads to check out?

Thanks in advance!

[L210]

Has your husband compared his current salary to what he can possibly make in San Antonio? What is your budget for a house?

[Danimarie]

Right now, I don't know if San Antonio would be worth the move yet? But, I am thinking in the future. Since I only see rent going up here. Right now, we managed to find a 1400 sq ft place that is only $1245 a month with 3 bedroom, 2 baths and a decent sized back yard. A similar place to this would normally go for 1400-1500+ at the moment. It isn't in that great of shape, but not awful either. It is a distance from his work and if he doesn't take care to leave early for work and arrive early home, he can get stuck in traffic for an hour. I've seen houses when looking on zillow for San Antonio going for much less when comparing good neighborhoods.

My goal would be to find a place where we could afford to rent or buy a house that was in good shape and still have at least a little bit of savings for important things. Based on the affordability things I've seen, San Antonio is cheaper than Austin on the overall, even when factoring in slightly lower salary. But, maybe it isn't cheaper for us for now because of the house we managed to find to rent?
Though, our groceries and gas still are more.

So, my question is more, would San Antonio be a more realistic place to settle in at because of the lower cost of living?
I did a pay scale comparison and my husband's job is worth an average of 69,000 here and 64,000 there. Right now my husband is making $63,000 starting, but that might go up 2-3 grand soon when he becomes permanent.

Here's the link I used for comparing cost of living. Cost of Living Comparison Between Austin, TX, United States And San Antonio, TX, United States

And quotes like this from people, make me think that it would possibly be a more enjoyable place to live...

From Yelp:
Source - http://www.yelp.com/topic/san-antoni...ve-than-austin

As someone who considers Austin their hometown, I would list these advantages:
1. Better food. Austin's best and most popular restaurants are mostly college dives that serve drunk college students. San Antonio has far better options for food in general. Better Mexican, better Thai, better sushi, better burgers, better pizza, better steak, and better upscale. About the only thing Austin probably has better restaurants for is late night omelettes and Chinese food (sorry San Antonio).

2. Cost of living. Living in San Antonio is super cheap. Cheaper land, cheaper food, cheaper gas. Just cheaper.

3. Better theatre. The Majestic, The Aztec, The Cameo, and the Alameda host better and more frequent shows, with better seats in general than their Austin counterparts.

4. Allergies and weather. Dry weather makes the Texas summer a lot more bearable. Neither city gets much rain, but the humidity of Austin along with the pollen can absolutely ruin whole months at a time for me.

5. Friendlier. This is probably subjective, but it's hard to find a place in San Antonio that doesn't treat you like a native San Antonian in about 2 seconds. Austin used to have a friendlier vibe, but with the influx of college students from outside the area, along with tech companies, there's a lot of hostility between the old guard of Austin, and the part that wants to turn it into the Sixth Street SXSW Domain brought to you by the Austonian.

another person's opinion

"I've lived in several states (army brat) and just recently moved here from Seal Beach, California. While I love the weather there, I couldn't wait to move back here. People aren't as self absorbed or ignorant here. Plus there are many attractions in the area, six flags, sea world, the zoo, the riverwalk... Now come on and quit complaining about not having anything to do here! While the restaurants aren't as multicultural as in Cali, I think it's changing and more diverse places are popping up. Also the cost of living here is so amazingly inexpensive! I've been to many "boring" cities and this is definitely not one of them "

I chose to *replace* bad words with less harsh counterparts...

"I've lived and traveled all over the world and I always find myself returning to SA. I lived in Austin for 3 years in the late 90s when I attended UT and moved back to SA because I was tired of the insane traffic and the ridiculously high cost of living in Austin and all the pretentious hipster *punks* who have nothing better to do than argue over who has a more obscure vinyl collection...
Here are 10 reasons I love SA
1 - Best Mexican food in the US - yep, I said it - Austin doesn't have *crap* on SA when it comes to Tex-Mex or interior Mexican
2 - Fiesta - 'nuff said
3 - The Spurs - 4 rings and counting - Austin doesn't have a major league team of any kind, and with UT, it's unlikely they ever will...
4 - One of the cheapest costs of living of any major metropolitan area in the country - when I moved back from Austin I bought a nice 1920s bungalow in Tobin Hill and my mortgage payments were less than I was paying for a crappy 1 bedroom apt in Austin...
5 - Some of the friendliest people around - SA's southern hospitality and Texas charm still shine through, even with all the recent out of state transplants
6 - SA is the biggest small town in America - everyone knows everyone else making it very easy to get established, make friends and business connections and connect with the local art and music scene - unlike in Austin...
7 - lack of traffic - SA is relatively easy to get around and local government has done a good job increasing highway capacity to deal with SA's growth - unlike in Austin where they have not added any new highway lanes since they built MOPAC in the 70s, even though Austin has more than tripled in size...
8 - SA is a great place to do business - local government is pro-business and it's an easy town to get established in - unlike Austin
9 - The Riverwalk - no explanation needed
10 - Our history and multi-ethnic culture - San Antonio has done one of the best jobs in the nation of preserving our historic buildings, which you can see anytime by walking around downtown, La Villita, the Mission Trail, King William, or Monte Vista. We have the most and best preserved Spanish colonial era buildings of any city in the country.

Anyone who says that San Antonio is boring or lame hasn't spent the time to get to know our fair city. Explore downtown, the missions, King William, or Brackenridge Park. Southtown has a vibrant art scene with frequent gallery openings. The clubs on N St Marys have an active music scene with bands and djs of all kinds. There are wonderful Mexican restaurants all over town. Quit *whining* about what SA doesn't have and embrace what it does."

The biggest things making San Antonio more attractive to me are the cost of living, more things to go see and do with the family, less traffic and they are possibly more family oriented. That, and the fact that Austin seems to be bursting at the seems, making it a concern. Seems like San Antonio has more room for us. Thoughts?

Another thought, are the drivers in San Antonio a bit better? Here in Austin, it seems like half the people don't know how to drive or are just too impatient to care. I say a little prayer every time I go to drive somewhere. Is it better there?

[Pancho-Villa]

Drivers??? NO..they are not better here...just as bad. We've had many, many threads discussing this. SA is expanding at a rapid rate as well. Traffic is becoming a major issue for me.I've been here 6+ years and notice a HUGE difference. Sigh..

[TXEX06]

Originally Posted by Pancho-Villa

Drivers??? NO..they are not better here...just as bad. We've had many, many threads discussing this. SA is expanding at a rapid rate as well. Traffic is becoming a major issue for me.I've been here 6+ years and notice a HUGE difference. Sigh..

Traffic is not nearly as bad in San Antonio compared to Austin. San Antonio has a few bad congestion spots (281 past 1604, 35 and 1604, 1604 out by Potranco), see a pattern. Austin is congested everywhere and and their rush hour times last a lot longer.

[dpantle]

Another thing I would be asking myself is it worth starting all over again on the employment scene for a 70 mile move?

Salary surveys are one thing, but can your hubby really expect to make as much in SA as he currently does? Maybe the first thing to do would be to further investigate employment in SA to know what your actual income could be.

As far as COL, SA may be slightly less than Austin, sure. But is it worth uprooting 4 children?

I can think of worse places to live than Austin, TX.

[Danimarie]

dpantle, my husband hasn't been with the current job for long, so it wouldn't put him too far back.
I would have him put the word out with his networking buddies to see what's available for jobs and the pay would have to be decent for a move of course. My husband does have some very attractive skills and is currently helping with the next version of the book that is popular in training on the software he uses. So, I think he'd have a good chance at finding a good job there. But, I believe in God's will, so if it was meant to be it would be, if not, oh well.

We homeschool our kids and we still don't have many friends here. Are roots are pretty shallow at this point and we wouldn't be moving so far away that we could never visit the couple people we do know on occasion. We've only been in Austin for a year and a half.

I agree that Austin isn't a bad place to live, but the traffic and cost of living are concerning and I believe I read the growth rate here is much higher than San Antonio, so we can only expect things to continue to get much worse.

[smuboy86]

It sounds like you have your mind made up, I'd give San Antonio a chance.

[Danimarie]

I do think that I'm seeing more positives to us being there than here if my husband could land a solid job. I was curious if others experiences on here were similar to the ones I'm finding? Or if there was anything else I might need to know? I'll keep looking through the old threads. Thanks.

[TrapperL]

I think yer puttin the horse in back of the carriage here. Your husbands job should be the determining factor where you move. He needs to find that job first. His field is a very narrow one and his new job might not even be in Texas. Find the job first, then move. There's not a lot of demand here for what he does and the folks needing his services are coming from other places. Might have him send Carter Burgess Jacobs a resume and see where it goes. There's obviously others that could use his services but most have only satellite offices here with the main designs coming from the bigger cities. Moving here and then looking for a job will most likely result in him driving a school bus for a living. Kindly remember, per Gallop, only 43.5% of people have a full time job these days. Moving away from one to nothing is pretty stupid.