Thinking about moving to Houston. I've looked through here and couldn't find any threads about life there. Any current or former Houstonites out there?

What's housing like, places to live, schools, etc. You know, all the important stuff.

And also, how is it commuting out of there? Are there alot of commuters, hard to get on planes?

Thanks in advance.

 

The summers are rough here so make sure you can bear hot and humid weather. We had a really mild winter this year so I'm thinking the summer will be sheer hell.

Real estate prices aren't bad (200-250k for a large house in the suburbs) because there's no space limitations here. They just keep building further and further out. Houston is actually the biggest city in the country in terms of area coverage. Speaking of which, count on driving a lot, which can be rough if you're from the NE where there's a <decent> MTA. The MTA here is a joke.

I live a block down from the galleria and housing prices around this area are high. Take a look at http://www.har.com to see about housing all around Houston.

Dunno about commuting in and out. I only use CAL space-a, if Kill Bill is around maybe he could fill you in on that. It's hard to get out of here a lot of times, but there's lots of flights out.

 

we just left bellaire (small community completely surrounded by houston just south of the galleria) for the hill country outside san antonio.

if you're only looking at home prices, you can buy a lot for your money but you will also get little appreciation over time unless you buy in bellaire, west university, river oaks, memorial, or a few other small, desirable areas.

the weather sucks, hot and very humid summers. only about 2 months of really nice weather in a year. lots to do, great medical facilities, etc but i like living outdoors and you can't do that in houston most of the time.

awful mosquitoes, high taxes (about 3% in harris county) so you can pay for all the illegals who choose to live there and all the social programs you and your family will never benefit from, etc.

we cut our taxes by 1% by moving to the most beautiful part of texas.

 

Kill Bill.. I thought Texas didn't have any state income tax... what does Harris county tax at 3%? Is it property tax?

 

How are things "Post Katrina"? Are things somewhat back to normal? We're from South Louisiana and want to be close to home since it's not a good time to go back yet, for obvious reasons. We thought Houston might be a good place for a while. So we're used to the heat and mosquitos, it's other worries we don't want.

 

46Pilot, you may want to go to www.newhomes.com and check out prices etc. Hope this helps.

 

I heard from a buddy of mine down there, that a lot of the homeless from New Orleans are now in Houston... and not leaving... Just a rumor that I heard... anyone confirm or deny?

 

It was pretty bad to begin with, and that's just the homeless Houston people.

It seems a lot of the evacuees are just wallowing around and expecting the government to hold their hands and spoonfeed them through everything. I get panhandled by a bunch of New Orleans people as well as some Beaumont people (who got hit by Rita) sometimes when I fill up for gas. It's sad, but it's also not terribly difficult to find a job here.

 

about 1% is harris county and the 2% is houston school district. it sucks. our kids went to private school so we got to pay twice for the education they should have been getting all along for what we already paid.

 

there are still 1000's of katrina "refugees" still sucking off the public tit in houston. the crime rate is up about 25% since these poor "victims" have been loafing around. i'm glad to be shed of the place.