Houston.....wow.
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5/6/2011
Either you'll like houston or you'll dislike houston. We lived in Tucson, AZ. In 2009, Arizona's economy was severely weakened, and very few opportunities. So we sold the house and set out for Houston in 2009 due to all the hub-bub about Houston being the "IT" place for jobs, economy, etc. First thing, I went from dry hot heat in AZ to wet hot heat in Houston. Arizona was hot, however this was a point in my life where I understood the significance of dew points (Tucson dew point 15-25, Houston 65-74).
Houston does have many restaurants, parks, theatres, cultural events around the city. However, if you have to get on any highway to get there, be ready for some traffic jams, ESPECIALLY during the summer months which seemed to kick in around may, ending around the end of september; make sure your A/C is in top running condition. Driving around houston was a crazy experience, to say the least.
We lived in Spring, closer to The Woodlands, which was a very nice place to live. The trade off was my commute to downtown for work. I'd leave around 6:15am to get to work by 7:30ish. Coming home was roughly 1.5 hours in traffic. I'd pray to God everyday to get me through traffic safely.
JOB MARKET? Let me first say this to those thinking of moving to Houston: Don't move until you have landed a gig. Its was a lesson learned. We saved, and had enough to live off for roughly 6 months, but i didn't realize that I'd use nearly all the $ before we found jobs. Houston's job market is interesting in the fact that MANY people were flocking to Houston due to national reports of job opps. Well, we found out that for every job you apply to, there's about 400+ people applying also. To sum it up, we moved in January 2010, i didn't land a job until August 2010. My boss said that I was chosen out of 384 applicants. We did everything you can think of to land a gig, and it came down to this: Houston has a lot of "who you know" going on, and/or you may luck up and work in a field where there's high demand. Some people get jobs rather quickly, but it had to be the grace of God to get something quick and easy. NOTE: Though there's a good amount of corporations in Houston, Oil & Gas Industry is HUGE: Take a ride down highway 225.
Houston gave us a tough ride and many, many things happened in Houston that motivated us to leave the city during the fall of 2010. We now live in the northern Metroplex, and we've had an overall positive experience thus far (8 months). It has its humid times, but not at all like houston.
In comparison of the two metro's, most of Dallas-Ft. Worth seems a bit cleaner and easier on the eyes to look at though it does have its share of ghetto style neighborhoods. Houston seemed and felt "dirty" in a sense. Communities were hit and miss ghetto style. Around houston, you'd see this landscape often: Tall office building, miguel's tire repair shop, broke down motel, luby's restuarant, car dealership, liquor store, mattress king, apartment complex, half vacated strip mall with graffiti, pep boys, chinese buffet, another strip mall etc..
In a nutshell, if you like it, great. If you don't like it, I understand. IMHO, all the money in the world wouldn't bring me back to Houston. just sayin'.
Phil | Fort Worth, TX