Top 10 Things to Consider when Moving to Texas

So you’re thinking about moving to Texas and you want to know what should you be considering hey in this video I’m gonna share ten things to consider when moving to Texas and I’m gonna share both the good and the bad hi my name is Dana Pollard and I’m a real estate agent in

The dallas-fort Worth Metroplex and I’ve lived here in Texas since I was four years old and I’ve been selling real estate for as a licensed agent for twelve years and before that I sold new homes I’ve been in property management had my own investment properties so all

That to say I’ve been in real estate a long time and I’m almost a native to Texas so let’s talk about the ten things to consider when moving to Texas so let’s just get this big one the negative out of the way right off the bat because

I have so many people asking me about this and many people comment in my videos about this and so the first one is actually negative and it’s that our property taxes in Texas are very high yes I’m just gonna come out of the gate right with this so if you are

Calculating moving to Texas and you want to get an maybe a feel for how much you should calculate I would say plug the number 2.8% in as an average tax rate for property taxes okay now they can be low they could be like two point one

They could be two point five but I’ve seen them as high as three point one ah yes you heard that right so property taxes will vary from city to city and even neighborhood to neighborhood especially some of these brand-new home neighborhoods if they’re like a master-planned community you have many

Times you’ll have like a pit a public Improvement District that helped to fund that master-planned community and so it really bumps that tax rate up and it sits there for like 30 years so good luck with paying it off but you could pay those feds off but I don’t necessarily recommend it

Anyway all that to say they are very high however the caveat to that is we do not have state income tax so maybe where you live now your property taxes are like 1.2 percent I don’t know but take into consideration if you have a state income tax of 10 percent and depending

On where your you know your income bracket lies it may be a wash and you may actually be paying less when it comes to cost of living overall paying high property tax rate those are just some things to consider I know that other states don’t have a state income

Tax as well but for maybe some of you Californians you may want to consider that the second thing you want to consider when moving to Texas this could be a bad or a good it just depends on the individual right is the weather and I know you’ve considered the weather

Already but let me just share a little bit and I do have a weather video with actual stats in it if you want to click this link up here or maybe it’s here I’m not sure but there will be a little link up there if you want to learn more about

Texas weather now just briefly Texas weather most days are sunny here but we do get storms we do get rain this past it’s a we’re at the very end of March going into April and we’ve had like three days out of the week that it is

Raining but as it gets closer to summer we’re gonna have more sunny days May is like the peak for storms hail or tornadoes again watch that video if you want to learn the real stats on that but overall the weather here in Texas I don’t mind it so we do have winters it

Does get pretty cold but not like way cold and so we make dip below freezing a couple of times a year maybe two three times or maybe it’ll last a week very rarely will we get actual snow sometimes well flurries or if we get an intra half

An inch of snow it’s like woohoo we got snow the thing to watch out for here is ice so that’s why nobody drives on the road in the winter if it ices and that’s a big snow day all that to say we do have tornadoes and we do

Have hail but they’re not as common as you would expect so watch that weather video now on the weather I love the hot weather maybe you don’t it does get pretty hot about three months out of the year what you’re just like oh my gosh

I’m ready for this summer to be over not me because I like to go swimming at the pool because that’s one of my favorite things to do but for you maybe you don’t care about swimming then you’re gonna have to stay indoors with the AC unit

Most of the summer long so I would say you can go swimming about five months out of the year from about May to September and then what’s really nice though is in October and November if you have a heated hot tub or heated pool you can enjoy that longer and in the fall

And in the spring you can have outdoor barbecues which are really nice number three you may like this and you may not but Texas is a conservative state overall I’m not saying that there are no liberals here because we have plenty of liberals here and so if you want a city

That is more leaning toward liberal then move to Dallas the city of Dallas Houston and Austin I hear is very liberal so if you’re looking for a liberal City move to one of those and if you are looking for a more conservative City maybe you’re looking at Fort Worth

Or the surrounding suburbs of Dallas I do consider myself a conservative and it’s one thing I really love about Texas is that I don’t have to worry about voicing my opinions in public not that I would in public but the circle of friends typically most of the people

Lean conservative that you do find some littles as well the fourth thing you may want to consider if you haven’t already are the bugs we do have mosquitoes one thing about mosquitoes is you just don’t want to be around sitting standing water so if you’re going to be like in a

Master-planned community or something and it has ponds just make sure they have the fountains go that’s my my sign language for fountain make sure you have fountains going because that will keep the mosquitoes away we do have spiders we call wolf spiders and you just want to spray for

Them hat pest control come out and it will take care of the spiders we do have black widows but again have your house sprayed and usually it’s really not that big a deal as long as you take care of your home one question I get quite often

Is Dana what about roaches I hear roaches are so bad in Texas well they can be now years ago I used to work in apartments and when someone was not clean and they did not keep their apartment up then they and they get an infestation of roaches it was terrible

And that would go to their neighboring units because that one person would not take care of the roaches and so yes that it could be a problem but it’s not everybody that’s like um I think we’d have an apartment complex of like two hundred and fifty units and we’d have

One person who just couldn’t take care of their unit so I have I ever seen a roach in my own house yes I’ve seen a roach and I freaked out because I don’t want them multiplying but I take care of it I get pest control and I don’t see

Another roach for another year or so so there you have it on roaches if you take care of your home you shouldn’t have an issue now ants ants in Texas yes there are ants and you’re gonna to continually treat so ants they are everywhere no matter how luxurious your home is matter

Where your house is in Texas you’re probably gonna have ants and you can treat for ants as well hey I have another video that talks more about bugs click on that link if you want to see that ok the fifth thing you may want to consider when moving to Texas is I want

To set your expectations realistically because you hear things in the media about the cost of living or the median home price but what I want to share with you is if you want to live in the city of Dallas it is expensive in the actual city same with Austin if you

To live in Austin it is an expensive city meaning you may hear the dallas-fort Worth median home prices like 270 which is accurate but if you want to stay in a neighborhood that’s low in crime and good schools you’re probably not going to be paying 270 in

The city of Dallas now you can pay 270 in the city of Dallas just to have those good schools it’s not likely right so what I want to say is if you want to live in the city you’re looking at 350 or more for your budget and the higher

Price point the better the schools so I would say if you want good schools and to be close to Dallas just find one of those neighboring suburbs so if your price point is 350 then you’re gonna want to go to a neighboring suburb versus the actual city if you want a

Good school district now if your budget is I’d say 500 or more then you can live in Highland Park now that’s going to be a small home in Highland Park but it’s a fantastic school if you’re looking at 800 or million or more Highland Park is definitely close to downtown Dallas and

You get top-notch schools and a great community so that’s an option by all means but if that’s not your option is surrounding suburb is great as well on the scale of pricing for housing in Texas for just the big cities Austin is the most expensive then comes Dallas

Houston Fort Worth San Antonio so if you’re just kind of looking at price brackets okay but listen there are plenty of suburbs to choose from to find the home the community and the schools that you want another thing you want to consider talking about schools is the big cities like their school districts

Are ranking really low now you have to think about all the people that are in a large city so I’m not saying you can’t get a good education in a big city but you know like the big city Dallas doesn’t have the best reputation when it

Comes to test scores you really have to go to a suburb to get those high ranking schools the seventh thing that you want to consider when moving to Texas is that there are many people who do carry concealed weapons and those are illegal by the way and so

I think it’s a great thing though because like for instance there was a shooting at a church recently in white settlement which is a suburb of Fort Worth and let me tell you that because we are allowed to carry concealed weapons that shooter was taken down immediately if we were not allowed to

Legally carry concealed weapons then that shooter would have illegally gotten if he was that motivated I’m sure would have gotten his hands on a gun and had a mass shooting so my perspective there’s my conservative ways coming out for you but is I think it’s a good thing because

Carrying concealed weapons helps protect our families another thing to consider when moving to Texas is the diversity here so some people have this thought about Texas that we’re all Cowboys and we’re all wearing boots and hats and don’t get me wrong I love my boots I

Don’t wear a hat everywhere ok you can go to the stockyards for that however I want you to know that because so many people are moving from all over from the states but as well as other countries we have so much diversity especially within the city so Dallas is one of the

Top-ranked cities for diversity and I think it’s a good thing as long as people are coming here legally bring them in I love the diversity so if you love diversity which many people have told me where’s a great diverse place Dallas is very diverse and so I want

Reason I’m saying you want to consider this though is I want to set your expectations not all just country rednecks here in Texas number 9 the homes here in Texas are a little different than most parts of the nation and so most of our homes are brick and

We don’t have basements here and so you may have already heard that but the reason we don’t do basements it’s not that we can’t build basements it’s that they’re very expensive to build here in Texas to seal it off appropriately so that water doesn’t penetrate the basement so

Many homes here in Texas especially five years old or older are very Texas style very traditional and sometimes you’re gonna find even in these multimillion-dollar ranches of very Texas not cabin but rustic rustic is a good word for some of these homes especially these ranches multimillion-dollar ranches many of them

They go for the rustic Texan all-out Texan feel I’m not saying all homes are that way we do have some modern homes that are starting to pop up and in Dallas and in South Lake and Flower Mound I’m just thinking off the top of my head in in Frisco we do have modern

Homes popping up but typically you’re gonna have to buy a new home or an almost brand-new home to get the really good true modern home here in Texas we don’t value the homes with siding very much we value the brick homes although that trend is changing a little bit with

That whole farmhouse style that has gone on over the past few years and the last thing I want to share with you and you may know this you may or may not know this but the soils are different here in Texas so if you’re moving to Texas and

You’re going to buy a home if you haven’t heard yet we have a clay based soil most of the soil here is clay based which means that it expands and contracts based on the heat or the absorption of water okay and so what that means is some of the older homes

The joke is if you haven’t had foundation work you’re going to need it at some point so some of the older homes have had foundation repair done to them at one point or another so what I’d like to share with you it when you’re considering moving here is when you come

To shop for homes if you’re looking for older homes just know that many of them will show that there was foundation repair done on it what you’re looking for if that’s the case is that it has a lifetime transferable warranty and you want to make sure that whoever did the

Work is a reputable come has been around a long time that you can hope that they’re gonna be around a long time in case you ever need them to come and repair one of the piers that they replaced so if you’re looking at older homes foundation repair is common if

You’re looking at newer homes let me just say this they have throughout the years change the way that they engineer their foundations so now they’re using what’s called post-tension foundations where they put the rebar in the foundation and then they kind of stretch it to hold it together

Anyways I can share more about that with you when you come to Texas so Dana tell me the next step well hey let’s meet on Zoom whether you are a year out or even need to move this month the next step is to fill out the dream home questionnaire

In the link below in the dream home questionnaire you will paint a picture for me of what you want in a dream home and in a community and after you share your favorite snack with me you will click the submit button and an email

Will be sent to you with a link to book a consultation call with me via zoom we will get to meet online and you can ask me anything you want about Texas then we will narrow down some great areas for you and when you’re ready I have a team

To help you find the perfect home for your family so go ahead don’t be shy the link is below in the description and while you’re at it follow me on Instagram and you can get to know me a little more in a more personal way I look forward to meeting you

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