Moving to Austin

This page is organised around what people ask rather than what we would like to say. If you are weighing a move, work down it in order. If you already know your question, skip to it.

Does no state income tax actually make Texas cheaper?

It depends entirely on your income, and the trade is real in both directions. Texas levies no personal state income tax and funds schools, counties, cities, and hospital districts largely through property tax instead. So the tax you stop paying scales with what you earn, and the tax you start paying scales with what your house is worth. Those two are not correlated.

A two-earner household on a high income moving from a state with a meaningful income tax usually comes out ahead, sometimes by a lot. A retired couple with modest income buying a large house often does not.

Why there is no rate printed on this page

You will find plenty of pages quoting a single Austin property tax rate. Treat all of them with suspicion, including the ones that were accurate when they were written. Your rate is the sum of several overlapping jurisdictions: county, city, school district, community college district, and often a hospital district or a MUD. Each sets its own rate annually, and two houses a mile apart can sit in different school districts and different MUDs and carry noticeably different bills on the same assessed value.

A number typed into a web page three years ago is not your number. These two primary sources are:

• Travis County Tax Office, for the actual jurisdictions and rates on a specific address.
• Texas Comptroller, property tax, for how assessment, exemptions, and the protest process work statewide.

The arithmetic, so you can run it yourself

Take the assessed value, subtract the exemptions you qualify for, multiply by the combined rate for that exact address, divide by twelve. That is the figure your lender will escrow each month. Three things people miss:

• The homestead exemption is not automatic. You file for it after you close and occupy. It also caps how fast your assessed value can rise each year, which matters more in a fast market than the headline rate does.
• Your first year is assessed on the previous owner's value. If they had held it a decade under a capped assessment, the second-year bill can jump when the property is reassessed at what you paid. Budget for year two.
• A MUD is a separate line. Much of the newer construction outside the older city limits repays its water and wastewater infrastructure through your tax bill.

Our mortgage calculator takes tax, insurance, HOA, and PMI rather than principal and interest alone, which is the only way the monthly number means anything.

Which part of Austin will feel like where I am coming from?

This is the most useful question anyone asks us, and the honest answer starts by admitting that no part of Austin is a copy of anywhere else. What follows is about trade-offs, not equivalence.

• Coming from a dense, walkable city neighborhood, and unwilling to give that up: Downtown Austin, or 78704 if you want to be able to walk to things without living in a tower.
• Coming from an older inner-ring suburb with mature trees and a short commute: Central Austin. Smaller houses, larger trees, and the shortest drive into town you will find.
• Coming from a large-lot suburb and wanting the square footage to survive: Southwest Austin or North Austin, depending on which direction your commute points.
• Coming from somewhere with water or hills: West Austin and the Highland Lakes.
• Wanting land: the communities outside the city, or ranch and acreage further out.

Browse it whichever way you think: by area, by neighborhood, by surrounding community, or start at the Austin page, which offers all four.

What do Austin school ratings actually mean?

Most of the ratings you will meet on listing portals are third-party composites weighted heavily toward standardised test scores, which correlate strongly with household income in the attendance zone. They are a real signal and they are not a measure of teaching. A 6 in a district with strong programs can suit a specific child better than a 9 somewhere else.

Two things matter more than the number:

• The attendance zone, verified on the address. Zones cut across neighborhood boundaries and ZIP codes, they are redrawn, and a listing that names a school is not a guarantee. Confirm with the district before you write the offer.
• The state's own accountability rating, published by the Texas Education Agency, which is the primary source the composites are built from.

Look them up at TXschools.gov from the Texas Education Agency. Our schools guide covers the districts serving our markets and how to verify a zone.

How does buying here from out of state actually work?

A realistic timeline, assuming you are financing:

• 60 to 90 days out. Talk to a lender licensed in Texas and get underwritten, not just pre-qualified. Start narrowing areas rather than houses.
• 30 to 60 days out. A tour trip, two or three days, structured by area so you are comparing like with like. We plan the route in advance; touring twelve houses at random teaches less than touring six chosen ones.
• Under contract. In Texas the option period is the window in which you can walk away for any reason, and it is short and negotiated. Inspections happen inside it. This is the part out-of-state buyers most often misjudge.
• Closing. Texas closings go through a title company rather than an attorney, and remote closing is routine. Documents can be signed by mobile notary or, in many cases, by remote online notarisation. You do not have to be in the room.

The full step-by-step is on the buying page, and Texas title rates covers who pays what at closing.

I am selling somewhere else and buying here. How does that work?

We represent you on the Austin side and place you with an agent we know personally on the other, rather than handing you to a referral directory and disappearing.

Jeffrey Grant has served two years on the Steering Committee of the Rise Referral Network, an invite-only network of Compass agents that has referred more than $75M in sales. Through Compass we work within a brokerage of approximately 340,000 real estate professionals across approximately 120 countries and territories, and 96 regional markets domestically.

What that buys you in practice is coordination. When one household is selling in one market and buying in another at the same time, the timelines have to be managed against each other, and that is easier when we can call the agent on the other end rather than email a stranger.