From LA to Austin-in response to Gina
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2/16/2006
Regarding relocating from Los Angeles to Austin and starting from scratch, I lived in Austin for a couple of years before relocating for a job. Austin is a nice town,beautiful hill country, very polite/friendly people, things to do, more space than LA, and you can buy more house for the money. Also, The schools in Austin are top notch and that only makes sense since the population in Austin is highly educated. However, consider the property taxes, they are very high compared to LA. Steiner Ranch for example would be approximately $3200 tax/special assessments per $100,000 in value and they have a very high cap of 10%on increasing the house value each year( I believe California is 2 or 3%).Even though there is no income tax, they make up for it with the property owners(the taxes will only keep going up). Other negatives, the drivers in Austin and all of Texas are aggressive, fast and right on your tail if you don't get out of their way. The traffic is getting bad, since Austin is environmentally conscience ( a good thing it keeps it nice)and has for a long time been against too many roads through the area. Depending on where you plan to work, Steiner can be 45 minutes or more to downtown in the morning. The nice restaurants and happening things Steiner is removed from, it's more of a bedroom community. The roads of 620 and 2222 near Steiner are getting crowded and I don't see how they'll fix that because they don't want to put more roads in the hill country, but they are still building more houses. Austin offers more high tech,government, and service type jobs than anything else, but it also has a strong entreprenurial spirit if you want to go into business for yourself. There is Lake Travis (which is 5min. from Steiner) and Lake Austin if you want to see the water, but it doesn't compare to the beach/ocean,and you have to pay to use the Lake parks. If you want to go to anything interesting for vacation, you'll have to spend money flying out of the state,because Austin to me is the only place to be in Texas; I know others would agree.
Abhd | Austin, TX