Suggestion on moving to Austin?

[gchapman]

Ah the Job thing. Yeah I'm trying to get a handle on that as well. Being in the IT field, there appears to be potential, but the downside is the pretty steep cut in wages. I do a lot of data center work now for a multi-national, which helps when breaking into a tech heavy area. Still, it sucks to lose 20k a year because you moved even if the cost of living is lower.

[Spookmeister]

...10 lane highway...

Surely you jest? We're giddy about our newly opened 3 lane toll roads that we will continue to pay for until eternity and you dare mention, and I assume, free higways??? Please don't be so unkind!

With that kind of budget, you won't have much trouble finding something ANYWHERE you like in the Austin area, except next to Michael Dell's...

The property tax issue tends to get blown out of proportion in my opinion. I've had appraisals I didn't agree with, went to the tax office in person and more often than not gotten more of a concession than I thought I would. Zero increase would have been perfect, but I wasn't going to argue with 1-2% when in reality the properties were going up 5% or more, and that's averaged conservatively.

[iguanas4]

Originally Posted by AustinGuy

The taxing county determines the value of your house. In Texas, home sales prices are not public data although there is currently a movement to get this changed.

I'm not sure exactly how they determine values, but it appears as if they guess at how much a particular zone has appreciated in the past year and just up everyones base values by that amount in that zone. They also fiddle around with the land vs structure value to get to their target appreciation.

So if home sales prices are not public info, how can a homeowner determine the approximate market value of their home? If you're going to disagree with the tax man's assessment (or if you just want to know where you stand with appreciation), won't you need some comps of previous sales to arrive at an estimate?

[Jaustin Time]

I've been contemplating a move to Austin and have been doing some online investigating of the area...

I came across a website... http://www.housealmanac.com/
that proclaims to provide "the value of houses in Austin, Dallas / Fort Worth, Houston, and San Antonio... current appraised values and recent comparable sales... " I'm not sure how accurate it is. Maybe some of the locals could try it out... and comment.

[AustinGuy]

You can look up any house in Travis county to see what the county appraises it at here:

http://www.traviscad.org/search.htm

This will also show you the taxes they are assessed if you want to research a neighborhood.

[AustinGuy]

Originally Posted by iguanas4

So if home sales prices are not public info, how can a homeowner determine the approximate market value of their home? If you're going to disagree with the tax man's assessment (or if you just want to know where you stand with appreciation), won't you need some comps of previous sales to arrive at an estimate?

You can get recent neighborhood comps from a realtor off of MLS or just use for current sale prices as a general, but not perfect, guideline.

[AustinTraveler]

Jaustin Time,

I tried the website out for you on our house. The value listed is our taxable value (which they no doubt got off the traviscad.org website). The actual market value on our house today is about $150K higher than the value listed.

You really can't go by the tax assessed value when considering the market value of a home. So much depends on what area the home is located. The neighborhood I live in happens to be very popular and constantly appreciating. With other areas the taxable value may be very close to the market value.


Like AustinGuy said, you can get neighborhood comps from a good realtor.

Hope this helps.

[Ellen K]

I agree with AustinGuy except the communte time, 30 minute commute would not be during rush hour. Visit the City of Austin Police website for crime stats. Some of the best deals now are resale homes.