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

[blahblahblah]

The spiders and bugs worry me but we have bugs in California too.

Ho ho ho hee hee hee ha ha ha. The difference between bugs here in SD and bugs in Texas is like the difference between pee wee football and the NFL. You obviously haven’t spent much time in Texas, particulary the Eastern half that gets all of the rain. Allow me to introduce you to some of the new friends you’ll have if you move there:

Fire Ants. Unbelievably nasty animals, you can’t even imagine how fast and ferocious these are. As an added bonus you won’t notice they’re stinging you until a few seconds after it happens. This gives the hundreds of others swarming up your leg time to sting you too. A great portion of your life will be spent trying to rid your yard of these pests. You will never succeed.

Yellow Jackets. These guys will build nests in your eaves and attic and sting you at inopportune times. Very painful sting.

Cicadas. These don’t bite but they reproduce in incredible numbers and make a really loud racket at night. Their dead corpses and exoskeletons end up everywhere.

Crickets. Awww, crickets are cute, what could possibly be wrong with them? Imagine BILLIONS of crickets covering the road, covering your garage floor, infiltrating office buildings, hopping, whizzing around everywhere. This happens every few years across north Texas. You can’t believe how unpleasant and nasty this is until you experience it.

I could go on and on but I won’t. The mosquitos get pretty bad across the state because of all of the lakes and rivers.

But you can get a nice big house for cheap there!

[jficquette]

The land is much cheaper because their is so much of it. Also zoning laws are much simpler and less convoluted. Also they have a lot of small builders.

John

[jficquette]

I moved here to San Diego in 1998 and left August 2006 to return to Atlanta. I just moved back. I am never leaving again. I don’t care that the cost of living is so high here. It’s worth it.

John

[bsrsharma]

I am never leaving again.

jficquette – can you elaborate a bit? Are you a native of Atlanta area? I have seen that Atlanta area has the largest inventory for sale and it has puzzled me why. You probably had a pretty negative experience to give up within a year of relocating there.

[SD Realtor]

Concho you forgot the chupacabra. A lady in San Antonio actually found a dead one. It was in the fishwrap (SD Union Trib) today.

SD Realtor

[jficquette]

I grew up in Alabama but lived 15 years in Atlanta where I had built a business and sold it in 1998 and moved here.

After 8 years of during little I decided to go back to Atlanta and concentrate on building another business.

Atlanta is a true boom city. They say 150k people are moving there each year. The area has about 5.5mil people in it.

My business was placing accountants in jobs, staffing firm. And I knew Atlanta has a much better business climate there with all the companies moving in and workers too.

But sometimes all the logical things don’t matter when your heart is not in it so after the year’s lease was up we moved back. I am going to do my business here.

I didn’t have a negative experience other then after living here for 8 years you don’t realize how much of this life out here is taken for granted. It was just a shock going from here back to a big, hot, super busy, southern city.

California has a lot of problems but weather, natural beauty, Ocean, Mountains and good people are not part of them.

John

[Coronita]

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.

 

A state that produces a president like Dubya is worth boycotting for 10+years in my book. Sorry, not trying to turn this into a political pissing match. Anyway, stopping in San Antonio a few times, I would say if I  were white, I wouldn't mind it there. But, as a "minority", I don't think I'd like living there. Can't tolerate the summers and humidity either.

[bsrsharma]

John – It is interesting that you went back to a place where you lived for 15 years and found you didn’t like it. It is also good to see Californians counted as good people. Many try to portray Californians as greedy, rootless and shallow with no sense of community. (Time magazine had an article headlined “The Great Wild Californicated West” in ….1972)

Any clue why Atlanta area has the largest “For Sale” inventory in the nation?

[mixxalot]

Creepy Crawlies in Texas versus Kalifornia

Concho that gave me a hearty chuckle:

Ho ho ho hee hee hee ha ha ha. The difference between bugs here in SD and bugs in Texas is like the difference between pee wee football and the NFL. You obviously haven’t spent much time in Texas, particulary the Eastern half that gets all of the rain

What about Kalifornia we have lots of big bugs and snakes as well.

[bsrsharma]

This NYT artcle tells how the implosion has become a neutron bomb for a Ohio suburb.

Can the Mortgage Crisis Swallow a Town?

Maple Heights, Ohio

TAMMI and Charles Eggleston never took out a risky mortgage, never borrowed more than they could afford and never missed a monthly payment on their neat, three-bedroom colonial in the Cleveland suburbs. But that hasn’t prevented them from getting caught in the undertow of the subprime mortgage mess now submerging this town.

Over the last 18 months, the Egglestons have watched one house after another on their street, Gardenview Drive, end up foreclosed and vacant. Although lawns are still tidy and empty homes are not boarded up and stripped as they are in inner-city Cleveland, the Egglestons say Maple Heights no longer feels safe after dark. Nor do they have the confidence they had when they moved in a decade ago that this is the ideal place to raise their 6-year-old twin girls, Sydney and Shelby. So, in May 2006, they put their home on the market in order to move closer to Mrs. Eggleston’s parents in another middle-class Cleveland suburb, Richmond Heights.

They have had no takers. Although they lowered the asking price to $99,000 from $109,000, no one has even come to look at it in more than six weeks. “My heart panics every time I drive down the street and I see another for-sale sign,” says Mrs. Eggleston, pointing past the placards in front of her porch to others that dot surrounding yards like lawn furniture. “Some people on the street couldn’t pay, so they just left. The competition to sell is just ridiculous.”….

[jficquette]

Barriers to entry in homebuilding are low in Atlanta. All you have to do to build a spec house is buy the lot, take the plans down to the county, get a permit and build.

Because the process is so simple and because land is relatively cheap there are several thousand small builders in the area who all build a few houses. In addition, the large builders are there too.

In short, Atlanta just overbuilt. It does it every 15-20 years or so. It overbuild in the late 1980’s, and once before in the early 70’s.

John

[CardiffBaseball]

I will continually post that I don’t get the Texas hate thing

In fact I spent much of my 18-24 years parading as a liberal, mostly to fuck with people, it wasn’t really deep in my soul but this made Texas kind of fun. I detested the simple-minded type of republican, and as a former weirdo subscriber to the New Republic (sorry The Nation was flat out too pinko for my taste) I used to prod them all the time. I am more of a Thomas Sowell kind of guy than these folks who were more “Bush Kicks Ass” in terms of political beliefs.

In any case one of the greatest reasons (and I am being completely honest about this) that I left Dallas was so that my sons’ would not grow up Cowboys’ fans. I had to get my kids back to NE Ohio, and we stayed there 6 years before coming here, long enough to ensure they’ll never root teams from any other city… Oh those obnoxious Cowboys fans, don’t even get me started. Yes I take my sports a little too seriously, that I was honestly concerned about this happening.

I am sure an Eagles, Giants, or Redskins fan would understand.

[jficquette]

So now your kids are obnoxious Ohio State fans? You should have moved to Alabama then you could have become Crimson Tide fans, just like me! LOL

John

[CardiffBaseball]

Obnoxious Buckeye indeed, but I like the Tide, and hope they come back. That SEC is going to really interesting once Saban gets it going. I am so stoked that we have college football back. My wife had a brother-in-law who grew up in Tuscaloosa, and his daughter chose Auburn so they all changed sides.

I told my kids unless you are suiting up for Blue in some capacity we will never switch. Mere attendance at the school does not provide enough of a reason.

[Author]

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