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nthomas | 6 years ago

Welcome to the Lone Star State! Cheap real estate and friendly folks. And BBQ, metric tons of BBQ...

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CydeWeys|6 years ago

And traffic out the wazoo, and few good alternatives to driving.

sdnlafkjh34rw|6 years ago

The traffic in Texas is significantly better than SF and LA. My parents live in a suburb that is 25 miles from the Houston and it takes 45 minutes to get to downtown during commute hours. My girlfriend has an equivalent commute in the Bay which takes around 75-90 minutes during commute hours.

The public transit is terrible in Texas so I expect it will be worse than the Bay in a decade or two if they refuse to build up transit, but for now it's a lot better. Texas has a lot more space so they've addressed traffic issues by building much wider highways and also multiple rings of highways. Obviously that's an unsustainable solution in the long term but for the time being, my Texas friends have way better commutes than what I see my co-workers deal with in the bay.

We shouldn't really be criticizing other states when California is definitely not the model for transit and traffic either. LA is a nightmare and SF is getting close to one as more and more tech companies move away from transit centers and force employees to drive.

fzeroracer|6 years ago

It's going to be funny in 5-10 years when the major Texas cities become the next SF because none of them are planning for any sort of large population growth.

Austin already suffers from horrific traffic and poor infrastructure. City planning here is a joke.

Aloha|6 years ago

DFW Traffic isn't that bad - noticeably better than Seattle - where I last lived before moving here.

driverdan|6 years ago

Westlake does not have cheap real estate.

sdnlafkjh34rw|6 years ago

Austin is the least affordable of the Texas metros. The affordable ones are Houston, San Antonio, and Dallas/Fort Worth (basically any major metro outside of Austin).

hindsightbias|6 years ago

And no Prop 13. Takes 1 or 2 reassessments before the screeching begins.

aphextron|6 years ago

>"Cheap real estate"

And the highest property tax rate in the nation.

burlesona|6 years ago

Because of the highest property tax in the nation.

This is a feature, not a bug. It’s very difficult for the wealthy to hide their property. There are also a number of ways to reduce the tax rate on one’s primary residence. Combined effect of this is surprisingly progressive, closer to a wealth tax.

Another effect high property taxes, is that most existing homeowners feel some pain when real estate prices soar and therefore there is a large contingent of voters who want to make sure that supply keeps up with demand so that their taxes don’t go up.

By contrast, where I live (in San Francisco), the existing homeowners make out like bandits when the government policies are punitively exclusionary towards outsiders. Soaring home prices mean nothing but good for homeowners when their taxes are both very low and virtually frozen at the original purchase price by prop 13.

jogjayr|6 years ago

Higher tax rates, but fairer than California. Your neighbor isn't paying lower taxes than you just because they bought 10 years ago when the property was cheaper.

sdnlafkjh34rw|6 years ago

High property taxes are one of the most liberal policies of Texas. It's a progressive tax that is largely shouldered by rich landowners and the revenue form a large part of budget for public school systems.

I'm not sure why people in California love our regressive Prop 13 tax rebates that largely benefit the wealthy and are a cause of huge budget deficits. Prop 13 is the most Republican policy we have in our state.

newguy1234|6 years ago

That's all relative because there is no state income tax so if you are a high-income person then Texas is paradise, even with high property taxes. Also guess who makes all the executive decisions in terms of where to put the jobs? Executives aka rich people.

nthomas|6 years ago

Fair point, but my wife and I bough at $1600 sqft home on a nice large lot in a decent neighb when we were in grad school (College Station, TX). We paid $120K and had P+I of $400. Sure, taxes added a couple hundred bucks, but it was still a fraction of California. We interviewed at Livermore labs during that time and the same home was about $1M.

We stayed here (she still at university as a professor), and I left to co-found a startup. Still pretty cheap real estate, affluent & educated population (of all political leanings), and endless supply of smart folks to hire. And BBQ. I'll take it.

Though I love California too, just returned from a week in Big Sur and then the wine country. It's just must cheaper to visit :)

toomuchtodo|6 years ago

Isn’t Prop 13 an enormous issue (with real estate owners not paying taxes on the true value of their property) in California?

jimmaswell|6 years ago

Friendly if you're the right political party and orientation, I hear.

corodra|6 years ago

Seriously, Texans in the cities may be redneck compared to the rest of the country, but holy fucking shit are they friendly as hell. If you suck in social situations, you will find plenty of extroverts that will gladly make you feel included in a group of strangers.

atlantacrackers|6 years ago

Have you ever visited? Talked to locals? You might be surprised how friendly people are IRL.

stjohnswarts|6 years ago

You don't know anything at all about Texas if you think that. All of Texas' large cities lean liberal.

refurb|6 years ago

Spoken like some who has never visited!

sojmq|6 years ago

Funny to hear that when we are comparing it to San Francisco. (Not trying to start a flame, I found this to be legitimately funny.)

cmdshiftf4|6 years ago

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