Tell me about Austin, TX

My company just opened a new campus/hub in Austin a few months ago off Lakeshore over by the Golf Courses.

In the interest of furthering my career with said company, it seems like it would be a good idea to move that way in 2-3 years. 

Obviously I know housing costs are much higher in Austin than they are in OKC, but I can still work from home 2-3 days per week.......although ideally I'd like to be close enough to bike to work since they have gym/showers/etc on the campus.

I understand it's like Nashville in that it's grown so fast the infrastructure hasn't kept up well, what else would I need to know about a possible move to Texas?

I do know they have no income tax, but that property taxes are approximately 2x what they are here. The idea of something like San Marcos could be good, if I could make the commute 1-2 times per week.

What say ye?

I loved Austin.  It is gentrifying a bit too much for many folks' tastes.  Austin used to be classy deadbeat hippies.  Now its rich entitled hippies.  But for me, the good news is:  Hippies.  I still love it.

I exaggerate.  It really isn't full of hippies.  It is a wonderous mix of the forward-thinking Seattle/Portland lib-types and a healthy dose of farm-raised BBQ.  Imagine quasi-portlandish earthy people who don't worry about gluten-free diets and eat bacon.  Liberal-leaning, but not the kind that looks down your nose for eating ribs or driving a gas guzzler.

It is the ultimate expression of a town that leans left and seamlessly takes advantage of Texas' right-leaning legislation.  My kind of town.  Caveat:  You don't have to go far outside of downtown to find belt buckles and Baptists, however the two communities seamlessly live in harmony down there.  Live in town if you want the dreadlocks and Trump effigies; live outside of town if you want the Stetsons and Trump bumper stickers.  That easy.

If you choose to live out of town, the traffic is considerable.  There are two north/south highways, both of which get clogged pretty heinously.  There are two basic cross-town loops that also get hairy.  San Marcos might be a hefty commute without traffic (but there is a Bass Pro Shops.. yay.) let alone with traffic.

Round Rock and Pflugerville are your typical sprawl suburbs.  Much of those towns is new and has strip malls and chain restaurants.  Similar story goes for Jollyville and Cedar Park, but they are a bit older.  As you go East in downtown, things get rif-raffy, but not bad.  It looks more rif raff than it actually is.  As you go south in downtown (just across the river) things get trendy and expensive.  Further south you'll find cheaper housing, but it looks very block-ish.  Small cookie cutter houses, condos, large apartment complexes.  As you go west out of town there is a sorta swanky suburbia area, then nothing but hills for a while, then a really ritzy area out around Lake Travis.

I chose to live for a while just north of downtown where 183 and 35 meet.  It was a large apartment complex and it was fine, but boring.  Then I moved up to Jollyville into a duplex that was twice the size for just a few more bucks a month.  At the time I was there, you could have bought a decent house in that very pleasant neighborhood for about $150-200k.  That was 2006-2010 and I'm sure that is no longer the case.  In 2010 we decided to move closer to my (now ex) wife's aging parents which took us to Pittsburgh.

If you're looking for value, pick a suburb.  You won't find anything cheap downtown or close to it.  But (at least as of when I was there) you don't have to go to San Marcos to find affordable living.

You would shoot your self with a san Marcos to lakeway commute. That's 3 hours a day in the car minimum. 

Lake travis area is a pain because nothing is easy to get Lakeway. You either live there and be stuck in suburbia or live closer to Austin and drive a lot. There is nothing cool or hip about Lakeway. DT Austin is 20 miles from there.

Traffic  is bad and the city has twice as many people in it than it can support with no signs of significant change soon. We lost the good club racing track last year so its 4 hours to the other 2 or pay a lot for a cota event.

Honestly, I'm so glad I'm leaving in 3 months. It was good 15 years ago. Now its just crowded and not nearly as much fun.

Btw Curtis, that 200k home in the arboretum is now double and even the burbs are pushing 250-300k with 7-8k in property tax. It's  gotten stupid priced.

One thing to watch out for is on the taxes, most of the properties are behind on valuation. When I sell my house, the almost 6k taxes will be 6500 to 7k because my homestead only allows for 10% annual increase and my valuation is 18% behind fmv.

I also really enjoyed TX for its simplicity.  You're right, there is no income tax.  I always rented so I can't speak for the property tax.

Vehicle title transfers were a breeze.  They all take place at your closest county tax office.  You will want to do yourself a favor and call the tax office before you buy a vehicle.  They don't accept a bill of sale for tax purposes, they use a "black book value" that is sometimes way off the mark.  I bought an F150 down there for $4500 which was a going rate.  Their black book somehow had the impression that it was worth $6800 and I had to pay taxes on $6800.  There is an appeals process, but it would have cost more than just paying the tax.  I learned my lesson and did due diligence the next time.

Registration and insurance seemed to be not too bad, but then again I just had come from Los Angeles.

TX has their head on straight. (which, for a liberal like me, applauding a conservative state's government means something)  They don't pay bloated government officials too much, and the congress is made up of real poeple with their own jobs; teachers, doctors, lawn care specialists, janitors, carpenters... whoever your district thinks should be there gets elected.  Then they show up once a year for "session" which is a couple months long.  They vote on every bill, handle all their E36 M3, and they don't get paid until they pass a balanced budget.  Then they go back to their regular lives for 9 months.

And depending on how long it takes to get there and such, I'm totally fine with renting as well. Just on my small team we have offices in London, Barcelona, Brno, Montevideo that I might also be able to work out of for a few years to experience that as well. 

Austin is 'California in Texas' to me. It makes me miss California. But im not sure I'd want to live there. I might move to san marcos temporarily but I wouldn't honestly want to live there if my wife wouldn't be going to school in Austin. Its like a 45min drive to Austin from San Marcos.

My ex lives there.  All I got. 

I got really drunk on 6th Street once. The traffic is the worst I've experienced. 

That's about all I got.

I'm only about 45 minutes away but it can take me anywhere from an hour to three hours to get to downtown Austin with no rhyme or reason why. 

It is almost as liberal as Colorado but is surrounded by an ocean of Conservatives which is what makes Austin work. Without the Conservatives the Liberals wouldn't have the money to be liberal.

As others have said traffic is a bear, but still better than Houston.

I'm in Fort Worth and I'll bet I can make it to COTA faster than you unless you live on the east side of town.

In reply to carguy123 :

The crazy thing with traffic is the time per distance. Houston is so spread out. But it's only 15 miles to downtown from my house and when I was working downtown it was 1 hours minimum home if I left at 5:30 or later. So I basically either left early and finished at the house or worked out down town till 7 when it only took me 45 minutes.

Anyways, it is what it is. I would take an overseas assignment first but I love to travel so I'm all for that. 

It's a great place to visit and spend some time for sure. I'll be interested to see how much taxes will rise from the new MLS stadium they just approved to draw the worse team in the league to austin.

I have to say, Curtis summed up Austin pretty well. Only thing I will disagree with is that the liberal/conservative delineation isn’t quite as stark as described, there are conservatives in town and liberals in the hills, but generally he’s correct. There are some fun driving roads a few minutes west, great autocross club in town and of course track days at COTA. There are also a couple of off road parks in the hill country, if you’re into that sort of thing. 

I lived there ten years ago, but we get back a few times a year still. Back then I would avoid I35 at all costs as it was jammed up during daylight hours and most of the night as well. It’s worse now, I understand that everything is that way, so there is a lot of incentive to live close to work and play. 

Curtis's description made me tear up a bit, because it's pretty on point and made me proud of my "home".  I've been here for about 25 years.  Both in Austin proper and up here in Cedar Park for about 18 years.  We bought our house when the market wasn't too bad and bought under what we qualified for.  It's a 40 year old house in a lower middle class neighborhood, but still pretty quiet and the lower house payment has saved us several times. 

Agree with the above statements that the Lakeway area is kinda out of the way for easy commutes unless you live in the general area.  But, Lakeshore in Austin proper is more downtown, so more traffic to fight and housing's even higher.

I'm assuming (only because Austin) that you're in tech?  WFH policies help quite a bit and a lot of people do it, but I'd guess that you don't have the typical 9-5 hours either, so if you're willing to get to drive the "off" hours, it's really not bad.  I've got quite a few in my office that roll in around 10 because a 25 minute drive is a lot better than 1.5 hours.  Austin's still full of lots of backroads that make commutes take the same amount of time, but at least you're moving throughout.  That helped me a lot.  We also have tolls that seriously cut down time, but they're the most expensive in Texas.  My wife worked downtown by the lake for a while and took the main road (Mopac/Loop 1) and used the toll which is variable depending on time.  It can peak up to $10, but it made her commute 30-45 minutes instead of 2+ hours. 

One thing I like it's it still hasn't lost it's small town core, even though it's huge.  I grew up in Dallas and the laid back, casual attitude of Austin is 100x better than the pretentiousness of Dallas (to me, YMMV). 

If you are in tech, are y'all hiring?  :)

-Rob

I would say something but Curtis said it all. I was there about the same time.

Left in 2009. Save for meeting my wife, I wish I’d declined on moving to Pittsburgh. I’d go back in a minute but it doesn’t make sense for my, hers, or our family. 

Just promise me one thing. You’ll drink some Purple Margaritas at Baby A’s I’d you move there.  

Rob, I am in Tech. ECommerce software to be exact, we are hiring like crazy, UX, Software Developers and Tech Writers, also sales, as well.

So basically it sounds like, if you are a bit more progressive than being from OK would suggest, like lots of stuff going on and can afford to live at your desired standard.........do it, if you can deal with the traffic?

Does that sound about right?

Yeah. It's not nearly as progressive as co or the left coast. It's only really progressive compared to TOLA. Lot of tech. Lot of beers. Lots of people. Salaries not any where close to cost of living increases. 

bmw88rider said:

Yeah. It's not nearly as progressive as co or the left coast. It's only really progressive compared to TOLA. Lot of tech. Lot of beers. Lots of people. Salaries not any where close to cost of living increases. 

It's interesting you mention that, I knew housing was higher. From what a few different calculators tell me, going from OKC to Austin means I need a 35% increase in salary to maintain my current standard of living.

And the company won't just increase your salary because you decide to move to a more expensive city.

I'm hoping I'll be in place for a promotion from Senior TW to Principal TW in 18-36 months. Which would help with the COLA.

z31maniac said:

Rob, I am in Tech. ECommerce software to be exact, we are hiring like crazy, UX, Software Developers and Tech Writers, also sales, as well.

 

So basically it sounds like, if you are a bit more progressive than being from OK would suggest, like lots of stuff going on and can afford to live at your desired standard.........do it, if you can deal with the traffic?

 

Does that sound about right?

 

I'm not progressive, and I still love living here.  I think the biggest advantage is that Austin is still a hot tech market.  Sounds like you like the company you work for, but it's always nice to be in a market where there are lots of options.  Depending on where your office really is and you're willingness to commute, the costs of living here still aren't too bad.  Then again, I only know the area around here, so I have nothing to base that on other than personal views.

I tried to ping you via the message format here on the site, but since I use a yahoo account, it doesn't look like it works.  If you don't mind, ping me at my username AT rocketmail . com.  I know of a few folks looking and I'd like to see what your company may have.

-Rob

Yeah I typed Lakeshore, as in Lakeshore Blvd in the first post, but a few people started using Lakeway.

The new office is on S Lakeshore Blvd just west of S Pleasant Valley Rd. 

And I'm willing to commute since I only have to a few days per week, and I can and do (even here in OKC) go to and from the office during "non-peak" hours. The days I go in, I'm typically in the office at 6:30 and leave around 3:30.

I'm not "progressive" but I'm definitely lean left much more than most people in my state. 

The already strong and growing tech market without quite the COL issues of the west coast is part of what makes it very appealing.  While I do enjoy the company I work for, it's good to be in a market with plenty of other options. 

Yeah, I'll shoot you an email, it will be coming from username at gmail dot com.

Rob, sent you an email, let me know if you receive it. 

I'm headed out there in late September for a few days for a company thing. Last time I was there was about 10 years back. town seemed cool but the traffic was re-freaking-diculous. And I lived in Atlanta.

z31maniac said:

Rob, sent you an email, let me know if you receive it. 

Got the email and replied. Thanks!

Lakshore/Pleasant Valley is on the south east side of town.  That makes commuting from the regular suburbs a little more difficult as you're having to cut through downtown Austin from most of those addresses.  However, you could go farther east and/or southeast, but that takes you out of the regular burbs and more towards the more rural parts of the area.  Not too far from COTA down there.  The eastern part of Austin was more indicative of the eastern parts of most cities, but with the cost of housing, more and more newer places are cropping up, but at typical downtown rates (i.e. $$$$). 

And we are totally fine with more rural. But of those are in the same mindset when it comes to housing, let's either be down in the thick of everything..............and if we can't afford it don't like what's available, something further out is totally good as well.

She sold her house on 17 acres last year before she moved down her with me (tiny town an hour east of Tulsa, so not particularly valuable land) so she would love it if we could be out a bit further. Just as long as I have super high-speed internet I'm good.

Another thing to consider is that Austin is a bit warmer than OKC.  In the summer it stays in the high 90s and it is common to have a straight week of over 100F frequently.  There's also no snow in the winter, just a couple days of icy roads.

My sister lives in the area (San Marcos) and you couldn't get me to move there if you put a gun to my head. The scenery is monotonous and hideous (everything is brown and dead), the traffic is berkeleying mental and if you haven't done everything you need to do outdoors by 10am, you're berkeleyed because it is now 115 degrees. Least favorite place I've been to.