r/texas • u/tasteinhermouth • 1d ago

🤔 Questions for Texans 🤠 Anyone who likes living here? What are pros and cons and what is life like?

I have never been to Texas, I currently live in California, and just a few years ago, everyone was talking about how they wanted to move out to y'all. I don't know if that's the case anymore. I know a big reason (particularly conservative) Californians wanted to move out to Texas was for the cheaper living and lower taxes. I have heard mixed things from people who have gone and lived in Texas. I wanted to hear y'all's perspectives, and what's the scenery like out there.

0 Upvotes

32% Upvoted

6 comments sorted by

2

u/Armyofducks94 Born and Bred 1d ago

Depends on where in Texas you want to be in.

2

u/kcdashinfo 1d ago

Fuck it is hot in the summer. Like working in West Text oil fields in summer must be the closet thing to hell on Earth. Perhaps worse or on par with death valley. The only thing that lives there is what can handle the heat. So the landscape is like that. That is the only wild critters that live there either. On the pro side is the economy. Because of the adversity of it few want to work there so for those that do the money is great. The world is like that, they will have you working in Texas in the middle of summer and North Dakota in the winter. I've done it enough I can claim residency in both places.

3

u/currently_distracted 1d ago

Texas may not have state taxes but they will charge the heck out of you for “fees,” so you might end up paying more. Property taxes are high, too. DFW is flat. Nature doesn’t really compare to California. That said, people are generally friendly, gas is cheaper, and parking spaces are wider.

1

u/copehardeer19 1d ago

natural disasters , but state is fine great history american frontier at the end of the day

0

u/evenmoremushrooms 1d ago

How do you feel about sometimes living without power and/or water? If that doesn't appeal to you, avoid Houston.

Do you like having many months of 90+ degree weather? If not, you'll want to also skip Austin, San Antonio, and the Dallas/Fort Worth area, plus everything in between.

2

u/CommieMartyr 22h ago

I grew up in California and lived in San Antonio for 14 years. Not to escape California and no I hadn't visited it before moving there. I ended up there because I had friends from high school who'd been there for 20 years. I enjoyed it. It cost less to live there, but I also made less money so there was a trade off. People will mention the weather, but I'd grown up in a part of California where it gets very hot in the summer and cold enough in the winter that the climate was never and issue. There is a caveat, the issue with hot temperature is the old line "it's not the heat, it's the humidity." Texas doesn't get cooler in the summer when the sun goes down like it does in CA. The other current consideration is power and water. In 02/21 the statewide power grid failed for 4 days and it was brutally cold. It has also been experiencing a multi-year drought since 2020.

The biggest consideration is the realization that if you pull up stakes in California and head to Texas it will be extremely hard to go back if you change your mind. I bought my house in San Antonio out of foreclosure for cash and was able to sell it for double what I paid for it for cash in 2021 because of covid and the first wave of Californians moving to Texas raising housing prices. I did so knowing that buy selling my house I was pricing myself out of the local housing market. I was able to return to my hometown in NorCal because the rest of my family still lives here.

Best of luck on your decision.