Austin Area TW Chapter (all gens welcome, even T4Rs; heck, just make it a Toyota and we're good)

You were in Austin for 5 minutes, and are now giving advice on bbq?

 

You act like I haven't had BBQ in dozens of places across the country Brown's is my favorite, out of all those

 

Find someplace within the service area of Grande Communications but out of Austin directly and you'll avoid paying higher property taxes.

Inside Austin we have Gig-E with Google Fiber, but we get taxed to fucking death.

 

I'm on that ATT gigabit lyfe. 50/month promo right now.

 

How are taxes for vehicle and property? I looked it up but couldn't understand the tables for example in my current town, we have vehicle tax - Providence was 60$ per thousand, with a 2K exemption, so a 30k truck would be taxed at 28k so $1680 in taxes to own a tacoma in Providence. I live in East Prov (different municipality) and the taxes are lower 37.10 per thou. Residential in Prov is 24.56/thou with a 40% homestead exemption.

Could not understand Austin's tax table. https://www.austinchamber.com/economic-development/taxes-incentives/property-tax

 

Divide your house valuation by $100. Multiply this number by the number in the far right of that table. That is your tax bill, per year. @CaptAmerica is a little bit off when he states that property tax bills outside of Austin are less. However, a bit of satisfaction is gained by knowing you are not funding the nonsense that goes on within Austin City Limits, and I ain't talking about the TV show.

 

Thank you! that makes sense now.

...Now to find a place we can afford

 

The funny thing, if you think the rich avoiding taxes is funny, can be seen when you look at the tax rates for Rollingwood and Westlake. Big money in them thar hills, and low(er) taxes.

 

My take on it: it's better than nothing. If the tax rates were higher, as you'd think is reasonable at the top level, they'd find a way to skirt them entirely/way more, so the lower tax rate actually gets more $$$$ out of them than a higher tax rate, counter-intuitively. It's low enough that it's not worth their time to try to skirt it. Just for S&G I just looked it up, 1 acre of land is 1.7MM WTF. That's the area I was hoping to kip up when we moved I am in the wrong line of work. RENTING FOR LIFE YEE HAW!

 

Vehicles aren't really taxed but hit with registration fees. Most I've ever paid in an annual registration is $82. We also have a state safety inspection that (mostly) involves making sure that your shitbox won't blow up on IH-35.

Owning property, however, is where they get you. And sales tax - 8.25%. I miss living in WA and that 6.5%, or ducking down into Oregon and 0%.

Austin over-inflates the cost of electricity because it owns the power company and uses it as the city's piggy bank. So Austin Energy only makes 65% of it's costs back in the electricity bill. The rest goes to city services (but don't get in a wreck because the cops won't show up unless you're bleeding or the vehicle is immobile). It's a racket, but every city has its way.

Another thing they do here is instead of raising tax rates (because that keeps getting voted down) they increase property values. They've more than doubled my land value (and that cannot be contested) in the last 7 years, and every year try to make my house cost $100K more than I would get for selling it. As it is, I'm at double what I paid to have it built. It's a fight EVERY FUCKING YEAR. Then (and don't take this the wrong way) some fucking idiot cunt asshole fucktard from California, Massachusetts, Maryland, or Virginia moves here with $750K cash that they got for selling a 1200 sq ft shithole outside of San Jose, Boston, or the DC suburbs and pays anywhere from $35K to $60K over market value for a home in their convenience area...further driving up home values. THAT is why "furriners ain't welcome here." We hate what you're doing to our property values, and thence our tax bills.

Oh, and your taste in BBQ will be called into question. Franklin is good, but it ain't "take out a title loan on your car" good. Valentina's, original Black's (in Lockhart), and pretty much everywhere in Llano (Coopers, Inmans) is where the good meats are at - and you can actually afford to eat them without taking out a meat mortgage.

 

Property taxes aren't as avoidable as others. Sure, you can slap a couple of goats on the back 40 and get an ag exemption, but that ain't happening in either of the locations I mentioned. A homeowner can fight the annual appraisal, with mixed results. At the end of the day, the tax rates drive the bill.

 

That's some damn good advice there. This is the look any car with out of state plates gets from me, when driving through our hood:



My tax bill is $1,466. Per MONTH!

 

cool to have that perspective. Yeah, house values are bajeebus here (New England). I'm far enough outside Boston that we don't have that effect, but Providence is on the upswing right now (and thus, east prov). Honestly after having been a homeowner for a few years, it's nice but there's upsides to renting.

I was sad - I was recommended valentina's but I was looking for dinner ~8:30 and they closed at 8 that night Franklin is good but I won't wait in line, I don't care about the cost as much - I thought it was on par with other smoke houses, but for 4-5 hours? Nah, not worth it in my mind.

 

Zombies in my area getting bad af.

 

That's about (maybe a few hundred less) than what I would be paying in rent every month I has a feeling we'll be renting in Austin and if we decide to stay in TX we'll either move elsewhere or buy further outside of the city. That's 150$ less than my entire mortgage (with PMI!) in East Providence. I'm sure in Providence we'd be paying more, etc etc. but damn. I was told Texas would be cheaper than New England!

 

I laugh at every one that says, "buh..., buh..., buh..., there is no income tax in Texas!". The piper gets paid, no matter where you live.

 

Come on over to the Houston area. Much cheaper over here. You may not like it as well, but cheaper.

 

Ahhhh okay so that balances then.

yeah that’s my philosophy. We are a regular family with two regular cars and a regular house. In RI the tax rates vary by town, so if I had like 14 cars I’d go for a town with a low vehicle rate and high home rate. But for us, whether it’s vehicle or real estate or income, etc it all realistically balances out.

I actually liked Houston and they had a really cool dog park. We’re kind of set on moving to Austin to at least get to Texas. We’ll explore other cities from there.

 

Houston is much less expensive, and since Austin has turned into Houston II, but with traffic, it's not a bad alternative.

I just had this book delivered today; might be a good read if you're thinking about Htown.

$17 Prophetic City: Houston on the Cusp of a Changing America

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1501177915/ref=ppx_od_dt_b_asin_title_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

 

You can find cheap tax areas in Travis county. Look west as mentioned by Jeff, also check out Bee cave. The amount of sales revenue generated there keeps the tax rate very low. It doesn't hurt that average home prices there are a little bit higher as well. So if you could afford it, you'll end up paying less tax living there.

I moved as West as you can physically go in Travis county without leaving the county and our tax rate here is very low as well. We don't have as many services that you would have in the city, but I got Hill country views and space.



East Travis county is flat, where the new Tesla factory is going, where the airport is, where the trash dump is, and generally not where you want to be in my opinion.

You go further outside the county to the east and you can get land cheaper for sure. You want those hills and that really nice view, you got to go west