Why is Texas dirt cheap compared to California for real estate?

[bsrsharma]

a home on a couple of acres for 200k which is possible in Oroville

CA? I thought Sacramento area has inflated quite a bit.

[mixxalot]

Oroville is 90 miles north of Sacramento and much less expensive. Sacramento is inflated market.

[amy]

We just moved to SD in April after living in Austin for 4 years. We LOVED Austin and it was a big decision to move away, especially when you consider housing. Our upgraded 3600+ sq ft house on a 1/4 acre, built in 2002, backing to conservation land in a great school district & neighborhood, was priced at $360,000. We paid $6000/yr in taxes, but no income tax. We cannot afford to buy a home here, although our income is now well over six figures. We’re renting until the market corrects. Austin is a fantastic, artsy, liberal, geographically beautiful, family-friendly, educated town that is growing incredibly fast, in part due to the masses from CA paying cash for homes. Seriously, of the houses in our neighborhood that changed hands in the four years we lived in Austin, easily half of them were purchased by Californians.
That being said, I lived in Dallas for almost two years and my husband spent the same amount of time in Houston and neither of us would live anywhere in TX other than Austin.

[gn]

amy,

Is it true that Austin is bad for allergy sufferers ?

[amy]

yes, it is. My husband has asthma and allergies, and he had times of the year when it was bad. “Cedar Fever” in Dec. – Feb. is particularly rough if you happen to have a sensitivity to that pollen. They have a saying in Austin, that if you don’t have allergies when you move there, you will within 3 years. I lived there for four and had one week in the spring that I had symptoms, but that was all. I worked for a pharma company and sold asthma/allergy medication, so for me it was great. 🙂 But seriously, I’m from New England and lived in Chicago and Minneapolis, and Austin is slightly worse for allergens, but not horribly.

My husband also has allergies here on the coast, so go figure.

[CardiffBaseball]

My son used to have pretty bad asthma attacks when we lived in Dallas. I forgot all about that until Amy mentioned it. They went away once we left for Ohio and moving to California hasn’t changed anything, he is now seemingly Asthma free for the last 6-7 years.

So I guess for the sake of the health of my kid I can put up living around you leftie’s 😉

[Anonymous]

A few points…

…first, property taxes here really punish speculative RE holdings. The lack of an income tax, however, more than makes up for it in my mind.

…second, while Texas does have a high poverty rate, the extraordinarily poor counties listed above are all along the Rio Grande river (“The Valley”) and that market has very little effect on the major Texas metro area markets.

…third, an interesting recent development is an explosion of toll roads across the state. In Austin, for example, there will end up being a clear differentiation between new developments that require a toll to come into town and older areas that are toll free.

…fourth, in most markets here, fundamentals simply are not out of whack. We’ll take a glancing blow from the national storm, but the fact is that when I bought four years ago my mortgage payment + taxes was less than the rent on an equivilent house would have been. Since then, assessed value has increased a total of 25 percent and a buyer now would be right at equivilent rent.

[sdsundevil]

Property taxes are roughly 3% in Texas. Traffic sucks worse than California and the terrain is mostly flat and boring. No state income tax is a plus though.

[mixxalot]

I dont have allergies but the bad pollution worries me about it since I dont want to get asthma from living in a place.

is this texas or just a specific case?

[Borat]

Why is Texas cheaper than San Diego? Here’s one reason.

[amy]

Allergies are bad in Austin because, unlike a lot of Texas, Austin is very green & hilly. There are lakes and rivers, and therefore there are trees and other foliage. Since it rarely freezes in Austin, nothing really dies out and counts can get quite high for specific pollens. And unlike San Diego, there’s not a coastal breeze to blow things away. Surprisingly, Austin is not that humid – there are a few weeks when it’s sticky, but mostly it’s a dry heat (and it does get HOT!).

[amy]

You can’t get asthma unless you’re pre-disposed. Then it’s a matter of your immune system kicking into overdrive. Austin does not have a pollution problem – it’s a very clean city.

[RunningBear]

We recently relocated to San Antonio from SD. Just for those of you who have never been here in San Antonio, this part of Texas is not flat, but hilly, not tan, but very green and full of trees. San Antonio is warmer and more humid that San Diego.

We had three years to decide where we wanted to relocate. After 15 years in the military, we were choosing our “final” home, where we are planting our roots and schooling our children. We have made way too many cross country moves in the past years and have lived in Dallas, MS, Upstate NY, coastal NC, AZ, VA and SD. I grew up on the East Coast and Hubby grew up in Orange County. We have lived a lot of places so we knew what was important to us when we choosing our permanent home.

We both own our own businesses, so obviously taxes and a business friendly environment were important factors. Cost of living figured in, as did having a kid friendly environment with plenty of fun things to do with our kids (Sea World, Fiesta Texas, Zoo, etc). And the most important for us was the school that we chose for our kids, a small private school, reasonably priced but offering one of the best educations around (even the College Boards agreed).

We knew what we were leaving, we love the beach, the coastal community, etc. But frankly we determined that the “sunshine tax” was too huge a price to pay, a tax on our future.

This choice isn’t for everyone. Both of us have moved many times and experienced many different “cultures” within the US, so making a move like this was not a big deal. In fact, we hear anecdotal stories of CA moving here all the time, occasionally, a disgruntled Californian returns home. But it seems most stay and I am sure they have their own reasons why.

Many of our CA friends expressed an interest in doing so, but having never left CA they did not know what to expect. And for most of them, it will keep them in CA regardless of whether they can afford to live there or not.

[Anonymous]

Q: Why is Texas dirt cheap compared to California for real estate?

A: You have to live with Texans.

[mixxalot]

Whats so bad about Texans?

I personally have found most folks from Texas to be more friendly, less materialistic and mellow that the so called native Californians and east coast transplants to San Diego and California.

I will have to see what San Antonio and Austin are like in Texas. Dallas is ok but a big city and major traffic. I have time on my lease to travel and check it out. Much cheaper than California!!! The spiders and bugs worry me but we have bugs in California too.

[Author]

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