What's the deal with Waco? (Austin, Laredo: appointed, real estate, how much)

[occdn]

Hey all.
My wife and I live in Orange County, CA and have been pondering a move to TX for almost a decade. An opportunity has come up in Waco, and we are close to closing on it.

We are curious though what people think of it.
Crime, walking index, livability, fun-factor, family friendly, etc?

I enjoy the outdoors: hiking, running, fishing, biking
My wife enjoys the indoors: shopping, online shopping, going out for drinks and dinner and then shopping.

We haven't visited yet, but that's on the todo list.

Thanks!

[Mark Senior]

What do you mean what's the "deal" with Waco. Many Waco threads just fell off page one. Click on page2 below or page 3,4,5 below and all your questions should be answered,lol. Or just wait for them to come back on your thread, one by one by one, again and again. lol

[occdn]

Originally Posted by Mark Senior

What do you mean what's the "deal" with Waco. Many Waco threads just fell off page one. Click on page2 below or page 3,4,5 below and all your questions should be answered,lol. Or just wait for them to come back on your thread, one by one by one, again and again. lol

Guilty of not reading past page 1.

[Mark Senior]

Originally Posted by occdn

Guilty of not reading past page 1.

No not "guilty" at all, just happened that these questions are answered on many of the previous pages, welcome to Waco, lol

[Dentontxboy]

They love it if you pronounce it as wacko.

[texasdiver]

Originally Posted by occdn

Hey all.
My wife and I live in Orange County, CA and have been pondering a move to TX for almost a decade. An opportunity has come up in Waco, and we are close to closing on it.

We are curious though what people think of it.
Crime, walking index, livability, fun-factor, family friendly, etc?

I enjoy the outdoors: hiking, running, fishing, biking
My wife enjoys the indoors: shopping, online shopping, going out for drinks and dinner and then shopping.

We haven't visited yet, but that's on the todo list.

Thanks!

There are a ton of Waco threads here you can search for.

Waco is a medium-sized Texas city that compares favorably to most of the other similar sized cities in Texas It has its problems but is a decent place to live and raise a family and is growing relatively robustly due to its central location between the four major urban areas in Texas.

It's a lot nicer than most other similar sized cities in TX like Amarillo, Wichita Falls, Beaumont, Laredo, Odessa, etc. But not nearly as nice as the newer upscale suburbs around the big metro areas. And, of course, nothing like wealthy lifestyle destination cities like Santa Fe or Boulder.

Most married middle class people find Waco to be a reasonably decent place to live and raise a family. Younger singles looking for excitement? Not so much.

As for outdoor activities. There are a lot of active runners and cyclists. Waco is surrounded by deserted country roads and farm roads, most of which have decent paving so you have near infinite options for cycling. I do a lot of road cycling and never run out of new routes to explore. Cameron Park in the center of Waco is considered the best urban mountain biking destination in Texas and draws some large races. Colorado Bend State Park is about an hour away and is a popular mountain biking destination for Waco and Austin area cyclists. Waco is on a lake that has some decent bass fishing and there are other lakes nearby. The Gulf Coast is about 5 hours drive if you want to do ocean fishing. Your hiking options are more limited. There are local trails but no real large wilderness areas within easy drive. You gotta go all the way to Big Bend or the TX/NM border area or into the NM Rockies to find wilderness hiking options. Or else drive up to Arkansas which has a lot better parks.

[ETex2]

Waco is experiencing a new popularity of sorts. According to some sources, it's all because of a TV show that highlights the low home prices. Hey, you can always contact Chip and Joanna to help you find the right Fixer Upper!

[JH6]

We watch fixer upper sometimes that is fine and dandy. We drove up to the fixer upper silos because my wife wanted to go.

Stood in line for 60 minutes to get into the "silos". We were herded around like cattle to look at $25 waco T-shirts, and junky household items that are not handmade, but looked like Chinese junk.

The year before we went to their little store in waco before they had the silos. Walked into the store, and there was virtually no stock of anything to purchase. The shelves were almost totally bare.

They have a chalkboard of visitors who drove from out of state. Some people actually drove from Alaska to come to Waco to check out the silos. We were disappointed, and we drove up from Austin.

We went to some antique stores around waco, some were dumpy and ghetto others were nicely done. We ended up finding some nicely redone furniture in taylor texas after all the searching.

Waco has a certain level of charm, old fashioned Texas, and a certain level of ghetto. Blocks and blocks that I drove around were very dumpy and had houses that looked ready to fall down, or roofs partially caved in, covered with tarps. HGTV does not show the waco that I have experienced.

[texasdiver]

Originally Posted by JH6

We watch fixer upper sometimes that is fine and dandy. We drove up to the fixer upper silos because my wife wanted to go.

Stood in line for 60 minutes to get into the "silos". We were herded around like cattle to look at $25 waco T-shirts, and junky household items that are not handmade, but looked like Chinese junk.

The year before we went to their little store in waco before they had the silos. Walked into the store, and there was virtually no stock of anything to purchase. The shelves were almost totally bare.

They have a chalkboard of visitors who drove from out of state. Some people actually drove from Alaska to come to Waco to check out the silos. We were disappointed, and we drove up from Austin.

We went to some antique stores around waco, some were dumpy and ghetto others were nicely done. We ended up finding some nicely redone furniture in taylor texas after all the searching.

Waco has a certain level of charm, old fashioned Texas, and a certain level of ghetto. Blocks and blocks that I drove around were very dumpy and had houses that looked ready to fall down, or roofs partially caved in, covered with tarps. HGTV does not show the waco that I have experienced.

Yeah, other than a few select areas like Austin Avenue and some of the nice neighborhoods along the lake, the older parts of Waco are fairly run down, or extremely run down. Most of the new development and wealth is in the southern suburbs and out around China Spring. And those are just ordinary upscale Texas suburbs that you see everywhere in Texas from McKinney to Round Rock. Often built by the same big builders as everywhere else like DR Horton and Lennar. Nice enough but pretty generic and certainly not anything unique.

I think a lot of people living around here would actually like to move into Central Waco and buy up some of the big old houses to renovate. But what stops them is the schools which are really struggling in Waco ISD. That's probably why most people live out in the suburbs, especially families with kids. Those middle class families with kids who do move into the central area are often Baylor professors who put their kids in private schools because they aren't worried about college tuition, or home school types.

[occdn]

I wonder how much the TV show is affecting home prices?

My Aunt and Uncle are the stars of Highway Thru Hell on Discovery - and they get a LOT of visitors (even from overseas). But it hasn't affected the town of Hope at all.

We're looking at it because of a job opportunity for me, and it would allow my wife to focus on being a SAHM and working on her business from home. I'd be a little disappointed if there was some false inflation going on due to real estate speculation from a TV show.