If you were hired before 2015, Houston is miserable. The flying is miserable. The traffic is miserable. The cost of living is miserable. The city and surrounding areas are miserable. Don’t come here. Everything is miserable.

For the OP… Houston and its ‘burbs are sprawling. It has every lifestyle you might want within a two hour drive from IAH: downtown/city life, suburb living or rural/farm/lots of land living. I’m here because my wife is from here and all of her family is close by. We moved here after I retired from the military. We live in a planned community in Montgomery County near Lake Conroe, about a 45 minute drive south to IAH employee parking. Between the hours of 7am-9am and 4pm-6pm the drive can be up to a 1+15, either direction. I-45 is terrible most of the time; I normally take the Hardy toll road.

My boy goes to a new high school that just opened its doors this year and my daughter goes to a middle school that was opened three years ago. Generally, the school districts around where I live, Montgomery and Conroe ISDs, are pretty good but there are a few schools within the districts to avoid. My wife is an elementary school teacher at one of those schools.

Everything that we need is within 30 minutes of my house, the furthest stuff being the Woodlands Mall area at the front of the Woodlands. Target, Walmart, groceries, gym, sports bar, craft beer, etc are within 5 miles of my house. My kid’s schools are a 15 minute drive. I haven’t been inside Beltway 8 loop but once in the last year, and that was to go to the airshow at Ellington Field in Oct. The baseball, football and basketball stadiums/arenas are on the south side of Houston and can easily be a 1+30 or greater drive.

Just for reference: Gas is currently around $1.99. Sales tax is 8.25%. No state income tax. In the area that I live, new/newer houses on 0.3-0.4 acres are generally $120-$145 a square foot (It’s higher in the Woodlands). My two story house on 0.4 acres is three years old and is around 4000 sq foot. I pay around 10k a year in property taxes and around 5k a year in MUD tax. The highest my electric bill in 2018 was in August at $287, the cheapest in April at $149. Average for 2018 was $202. It uses gas for heating and appliances, highest was in January at $185, the lowest was $26 in August and average for 2018 $84. Garbage and recycling runs once a week and costs $49 a month. A car and SUV fully insured with a $1000 deductible costs me $160 a month with USAA.

Again, all of that was just for reference. Everybody has different tastes and lifestyles so YMMV. As mentioned before, HAR.com is a pretty good place to start. My biggest hate with the Houston area is there are only two seasons. The summers are brutal hot and humid. The “cold” months, generally from November to April, are fairly mild. It rarely gets below freezing here. And the mosquitos are ginormous.