Cost-of-living comparisons usually produce a single index number, which is close to useless for deciding whether to move. The number that matters is your number, and the honest way to get it is to go line by line and see which ones genuinely change.
Housing, the line that moved most
Austin ran up hard and then corrected hard. As of August 2026 the Austin-area median sold price sits near $416,000, roughly 24% below the May 2022 peak, with about 5.9 months of inventory and homes averaging around 68 days on market.
Against most of coastal California and the New York metro, that remains a large saving. Against much of the rest of Texas and the Midwest, Austin is still the expensive option. Both statements are true and which one applies is entirely a function of where you are leaving.
The important caveat: metro medians hide enormous variation. A house in Central Austin and a house of similar size in Buda are not competing for the same buyer and do not trade at the same price per square foot.
Income tax, the line that disappears
Texas levies no personal state income tax. For a high earner leaving a state with a meaningful one, this is the single largest change in the entire comparison, and it is the reason the move pencils out for a lot of households that would otherwise stay put.
It is also the line most often oversold. It scales with income, so a retired couple with modest income sees very little of it while a two-earner technology household sees a great deal. If your income is modest, do not let the absence of income tax do heavy lifting in your budget that it cannot actually do.
Property tax, the line that appears
This is the counterweight, and it is the one that catches people. Texas funds schools, counties, cities, and hospital districts largely through property tax, so rates here are high by national standards. Your rate is the sum of several overlapping jurisdictions and differs address by address, sometimes noticeably between houses a mile apart.
Two mechanics matter for budgeting. Your first-year bill is often based on the previous owner's capped value, so year two can jump once the property is reassessed at your purchase price. And if the property sits in a Municipal Utility District there is an additional line on the bill entirely, which is common in newer construction outside the older city limits.
Both are written up separately: what Texas property tax costs an out-of-state buyer, what a MUD tax is, and the homestead exemption, which reduces the taxable value and caps how fast it can rise. File for it. It is free and it is not automatic.
Insurance and utilities, the lines nobody quotes
Homeowners insurance. Texas premiums have risen, driven by hail, wind, and severe weather claims across the state. Buyers arriving from lower-premium states are frequently surprised, and it is worth getting a real quote on a specific address during the option period rather than assuming a national average. Roof age drives the number more than most people expect.
Electricity. Cooling a house through a Central Texas summer is the peak load of the year, and the bill in July and August bears no relation to the one in March. Insulation, window orientation, and the age of the system matter a great deal. Ask a seller for twelve months of bills rather than a typical month.
Water. Varies by provider, and outside the city utility system it can be a different structure entirely.
Transport
Austin is a driving city. There are neighborhoods where a household can genuinely run one car or none, mostly close in, and there is a much larger metro where two cars is the practical assumption. Budget accordingly, and drive the commute at the hour you would really be driving it before you commit to a neighborhood on the strength of a mapping app's midday estimate.
The comparison worth actually running
Skip the index. Take your current annual outgoings and rebuild them with Austin numbers:
- State income tax: your actual figure, which becomes zero.
- Housing: the payment on the specific price band you would buy in, not the metro median.
- Property tax: the reassessed figure at your purchase price with your exemption, not the seller's bill.
- Insurance: a real quote on a real address.
- Electricity: a summer month and a shoulder month, not an average.
- Transport: the number of cars you will actually run.
That exercise takes an afternoon and is worth more than every cost-of-living calculator combined, because it is about you rather than about a hypothetical household of four.
What we do about it
We will pull the real tax jurisdictions for any address you are considering and show you the monthly figure with your exemption applied. If a house you like carries a MUD, an unusually old roof, or a tax profile that changes the comparison, you will hear it from us before you write an offer rather than afterwards.