Originally Posted by Dylan
By area you may not want to live in, I mean higher crime area. That being said, Mahhh Woman and I currently live in an area that gets a lot flack. We don't see the kind of crime that gets reported for this area though. And when watching the news, a lot of crimes get chalked up to our neighborhood when in actuality, it's many many blocks away. While we don't deal with the supposed crime, we DO deal with police officers who are off the charts. They constantly pull over people for no reason. They frequently sit in front of our house. We are constantly lulled to sleep by the ghetto bird searching for 'something'. I don't know if we would experience more crime if we didn't have a Pit Bull and a German Shepherd, but I don't think so. I mean, we have lived here for two years, and the worst thing we've heard happen was a car window getting broken out...but that happens a lot these days thanks to the economy.
In our neck of the woods, houses are mostly 3/1 ranch houses of roughly 800 square feet. The average rent is around $975 to $1050. The houses are poorly built, and were slapped up in the late 50s/early 60s. They're those Sears houses you could order through the catalog. They're kind of more like trailers with wooden siding. We do have hardwood floors though! We have a much bigger yard than most of the more expensive rentals too. The house across the street from us is always for rent. It's a little bigger (maybe around 1100/1200 square feet) and of a different design, but still a 3/1; two tenants ago (about a year ago), it was renting for $1350.
You'll get more space in South Austin (we're in North Austin)...especially south of 71/Ben White (oh, btw, many streets have two names). North Austin rental houses tend to be pretty small especially in areas like Hyde Park (wayyyyyy over-priced) until you get into areas off of 183 like Braker and Duval and 183. These areas are kind of far out of downtown though, and there's really nothing to do up there...you start getting into "South Dallas" up that way.
You can still find some decent deals on the East Side (east of 35), but they're hardly ever advertised on CL. Also, the East Side is currently being gentrified, so you'll probably see more really expensive East Side properties listed on CL. It's one of those areas you have to drive around to find the good deals. Some people are really starting to get pretentious with their East Side Re-do, and they're charging exorbitant rents.
The Cool Kids tend to live in South Austin.
And so you're prepared...our summer electric bills for 800 square feet are between $200 and $300 a month and sometimes more. Now last summer was outrageous, but... When I lived in a nicer, bigger house, my summer electric bills topped out at $400 a month for 1500 square feet (the house was built in the 1920s and all of the glass was original, so it was not the most energy efficient house...but it was beautiful). When I lived in a 750 square foot apartment, my summer electric bill topped out at $80...when you added in water and trash in an apartment, I was looking at about $115 in the summertime. If you live in a house, water and trash is added into your electric bill (if you have city electric).
I don't know what y'all do for a living, but finding a job here could be difficult. Be prepared for that.
The nice thing about Austin is One can really afford to shop local all the time. Local shops are everywhere in Central Austin. We have a Wal-Mart tho. Mahhh Woman and I shop the Wal-Mart for groceries, because I don't like HEB meat, and I can't afford to shop at Randalls (the high falutin' grocery store). We also have a number of independent healthier groceries, and most of them are reasonable. We tend to only do the Wal-Mart if we're going MAJOR grocery shopping. If Mahhh Woman liked to grocery shop more, we could easily buy all of our groceries at local places, but we'd have to hit up a whole bunch of them to get everything we want within our budget. Mahhh Woman hates to go grocery shopping tho, so she doesn't want to be in a bunch of different stores getting in and out of the car. She gets too annoyed with my grocery-ing, because I tend to be slow...we end up at Wal-Mart, so her head doesn't explode.
Might Be More Than You Wanted,
Dylan
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