Knowing the Cost of Your Move

This is a first for me, but hopefully not a last. I was contacted by James Kim, and he asked if he could be a guest author and write an article for my blog. I said "sure!" Well, I can say he wrote a good article with some excellent info about Houston, and other areas of Texas. Enjoy...and thanks James!

--------------------
KNOWING THE COST OF YOUR MOVE

Times have been tough. And, honestly, it was hard enough finding a good price on a house before the economy tanked. With everyone tightening their purse strings, it’s important to look closely at the areas you want to live. First, you want to make sure that that wallet of yours can get filled with money from a good job market, indicated by the amount of corporate presence in an area. And, second, you want to make sure that you don’t have to shell out a lot of cash just to get by day-to-day. If all of this makes sense to you, you’ll be happy to know that finding a good area isn’t as hard as you might have thought. Fair warning, though: by the end of this article you might find yourself saying “howdy” and “y’all” while searching for some Austin real estate.

So, first things first: where are you most likely to find a job? Forbes points out several good areas, saying that St. Louis is home to 9 of the strongest companies in the country while Texas goes above and beyond with 38 in Houston and 15 in Dallas. And these are certainly not companies that just earned a Forbes ranking through some fluke of arithmetic or Enron-style accounting. St. Louis holds the famous Energizer Holdings Inc. along with the massive, chemical-dealing Monsanto Company. But again, Texas seems to edge out in front, with Houston hosting ConocoPhillips and Halliburton, Austin hosting Dell and Whole Foods and Dallas hosting AT&T and Texas Instruments (a longer list is here).

“But wait,” you say. “What about those thriving areas of commerce like New York City!?” Simple: those places are incredibly expensive to live in. As you can probably guess, New York City is the most expensive city in the country while the popular destinations of California and Hawaii are tied for the title of most expensive state. You’re going to be paying a lot more for a gallon of milk in New York City than you would in almost any other part of the country. Unless you can safely say that the money doesn’t matter, those are not very good places to move to right now.

With those out of the way, we can have a look at the already solid locations that were previously mentioned. St. Louis, as Forbes points out, follows the trend of most Midwestern states by being incredibly inexpensive – the lowest cost of living in the country, in fact. St. Louis “might not have the reputation for top schools, a low crime rate or good weather,” but you certainly won’t have to pay much to live there. The reason for this is quite simple: the Midwest is landlocked, and that’s not something that attracts the title of “prime real estate.” But Texas? The state that is home to perhaps the best job market in the country right now? It’s also not expensive to live in, and features a cost of living that is low across the board; you can’t make many wrong moves there (and you can always live along the Gulf of Mexico if a beach is a must-have for you).

When you’re looking to move, you have to be realistic about all of your options. Knowing what the job prospects are where you’re going to live along with how much it will cost to live there is incredibly important. For the best of both worlds, Texas is your best bet at the moment, but nothing can beat the Midwest (and St. Louis, in particular) when it comes to just being simply inexpensive. As long as you’re realistic with what you can afford, you should have no problem finding a suitable area to move to, even with things the way they are today.

James Kim writes for Austin Real Estate service Homecity.com. HomeCity combines powerful online Austin MLS search technology and other online tools with personalized real estate services to provide clients with the knowledge they need to make the right buying and selling decisions.