 I'll be honest, I tend to romanticize living in Austin, Texas a lot in my vlogs, but have you guys ever wondered about the cons of living here? Today, I'm going to be covering the pros and cons of living in Austin, Texas. My name is Sonali, my name is Ryan, and we have been living here since June 2019. Ryan actually got a job here. So we moved here after college without even visiting the city. We were both raised in a northern suburb of Atlanta, Georgia called Roswell, Georgia, and moving here from both of our college towns, it was a bit of a culture shock to see kind of east coast versus Midwest South culture. Starting off with the first pro, Austin is a small city relative to other cities. It's fairly compact. So if you want to go out to eat or visit a friend, you probably only live about 10 or 15 minutes from them at most. Depending if you live right in the city. I mean, a lot of people do choose to live a little bit outside of the city and that adds a good 10, 15 minutes to your drive. But still, it's it's pretty close to the city itself. The con of being such a small city is that there is a lot of traffic. I think the influx of people moving in, the infrastructure just doesn't really meet the requirements of all the people who are moving here. So any given day, you can sit in about 30 minutes of traffic if you're going at the right time, you know, it's kind of tough. You definitely have to pick and choose when you're going to go, where you're going to go, if you have the choice, of course. Whenever somebody asks me why I love Austin so much, I always tell them it's because Austin has so many just bodies of water everywhere. You can swim in, you can kayak, you can paddleboard. It's just such a fun environment, especially in the summers. I also love to run along the trails that go beside the water here in downtown Austin. Ladybird Lake Trail. I guess that's what it's called. Yeah, it runs all the way to Zoker. So it's a good like 20 miles, maybe if you do the whole loop. And if you drive over any of the bridges during the day, you'll see hundreds of people on paddleboards and different boats and stuff. So definitely young and fit city. The next con is one that was one of the biggest shocks to me overall. And that was a number of homeless people that are here. I loved in Athens for a while, which has a large homeless population also. But this was like almost overwhelming when we moved here. I'm not really just seeing like the tent cities and stuff that kind of take over the medians of the highways and stuff here. Yeah, and we live on Riverside, so it's pretty bad in our area. And this is one of the comments I get a lot is that I romanticize Austin a lot and I don't show the homeless people. So here you go, guys. Like now you know that Austin has a lot of homeless people. I know that there is like a ballet coming out that you can vote out having. Yeah, the camping. So it might change in the next year. We will see. But yeah, there's homeless people in Austin, depending on where you're coming from, the weather could be a pro or a con. For me, I came from, well, Atlanta, I'm suburbs of Atlanta. And then I went to college in Orlando, Florida. So it's humid. It was hot. But this hot is an extreme. It gets up to like 100 almost every day of the summer. And it was unlike anything I've ever felt before. But I've definitely gotten used to it. What do you think? Yeah, one of the best things for me. I love to golf. So year round golf is kind of a thing. It never really gets that cold. Obviously made news with like the big freeze and snowstorm here, which was like the store. But for the most part, it's always warm and sunny, not too much rain. Yeah, that's the best thing, especially because I'm a photographer. It almost never rains. So I almost never have to rebook someone. So on the other note for that, it is so hot sometimes that like you'll burn yourself getting in your car or, you know, I just get back sweat walking to my car. Usually it's so hot. If you have a car in Austin, do not give black interior like or put a window shade up like you'll crack the dashboard or the leather on it. It's just yeah. Yeah. It's it's pretty it's pretty bad here. So if you really don't like sweating, it's going to be a hard thing for you. Or you can always get Botox. I heard that helps not sweating. I know me too. One of my favorite pros about Austin, Texas is that the food here is insanely good. Most of the food here is so local that it's either food trucks or restaurants that used to be food trucks, and they've just gotten really popular. So you don't do too much of the chain restaurant atmosphere. It's a good mix up compared to Atlanta, where usually you're eating fast food or something that's just part of the chain. So if you eat the same thing twice here in a row, you probably aren't looking for good food. If you live in Austin and are wanting to find some new restaurants to try out or you're visiting Austin soon and you want to know the must try restaurants, I will have a blog post linked down below of all of our favorite restaurants. We are huge foodies and have eaten at so many restaurants in the past two years. So definitely check that out. I also have one for happy hours if you want to save a buck or two. One of the biggest cons for me overall is that if you want to eat anywhere good or popular, you're probably going to wait in a really long line. That's why my biggest pet peeve of Austin is the traffic and just waiting in line to get something to eat in the morning or for dinner. Yeah, open table and resume will definitely be your best friend. Make reservations if you can. Like we said, we're from suburbs of Atlanta and you always think that people there are super nice like Southern hospitality, all that kind of thing. But even my friends from Georgia came here to visit me and they said that people here are extremely nice and I definitely have to agree with them. I feel like people here are just so open minded and like laid back. The whole vibe of the city is really laid back, I would say. And if you guys know me, if you guys watch my vlogs, I take pictures all around the city and a lot of people are just so non-judgemental about that. And I feel like, yeah, encouraging. There's also so many creatives here. So I feel like people are just used to it. The next con without going too much into the politics of the city is that it's not very well maintained. It's often dirty or littered with trash because a little better when you go out towards Westlake and some suburban areas. But overall, I'd say compared to like Dallas and Atlanta, Charlotte, it's a little bit misdirty for lack of a better word. We just went to visit Dallas and I was actually shocked that I saw like flowers here and there, like tulips near like just, I don't know, random places. I was like, wow, that's beautiful, you know, because I'm just not used to seeing it. Landscaping is a little different here because it's so dusty and dry. Yeah. But maybe just the environment overall may have an impact on that. That's true. Like Ryan was saying earlier, there are a lot of local brands to support, whether that be food or cute little stores to shop at. There are a lot of just like random Austin brands. I mean, like the things that I can think of are like Tito's vodka, which is pretty big now. But there are a lot of just like local startups here in Austin. But the downside of everything being local is that it does come with a price tag. You know, it's just more expensive to run a local food truck versus a chain for supply. So you may pay a little bit more for your breakfast or your coffee or whatever that may be. But you don't really sacrifice quality. I think people really try hard to make their brand stand out and be you know, popular to make it big. Austin is very dog friendly. We have a guest, her name's Sophie, and she loves Austin. We just had to take her in the car everywhere we were going because we weren't really going in anywhere. So we were just like, oh, we'll just take her, you know. And now I swear she is like separation anxiety. And she like always has to come with us. But that's great because I feel like so many places here in Austin don't really even care if you have a dog. And that's really nice if you're worried about leaving your furry friend at home. Definitely be careful. There's been a few incidents of dog's dying in Lady Bird in Lake Travis from drinking the water. Yeah. Has a certain bacteria in it or something that is during the summer. Yeah, it's toxic to dogs. So just keep an eye out for that. Another con is that with all the people moving here, the housing market is insane right now. If you're coming from California or New York, you may not think so, but compared to Atlanta, Dallas, even Florida, it's crazy expensive just to buy a two bedroom house in Austin. If you want something under $500,000 near the city, you're probably buying like a rundown shack. And in Atlanta, you can buy like a really nice townhome or like a five bedroom house depending on where you're wanting in Atlanta. So it's a big difference. This pro is kind of random, but I thought it was a cool one to share. I feel like the city of Austin does have a lot of similarities between California rather than the East Coast. And since it's such an up-and-coming city, a lot of really cool like LA brands, I would call them, are coming and popping up here. They have stores here up in the domain. Like the first time I saw like Thabletics in a store, I was like, wait, I thought they were only online. It's just cool to see so many brands coming to Austin. The next con is that the airport is tiny. I guess it can be a pro also because there's no line, but if you want to get an international flight or want a cheap flight for that matter, it's not going to be out of Austin. I pay almost $200 just to fly to Atlanta. You know, if you flew out of Houston or San Antonio even, it's going to be like a $90 flight probably. One of the pros you may not notice around here is that the gas prices are relatively low compared to Atlanta or other cities in Texas. The fuel-efficient market like electric vehicles is really big around here. So you'll see charging spots everywhere on the city. Especially because Tesla's coming. Yeah, the Tesla headquarters is being built for the Cybertruck, only a few minutes from our house right here. And it's just really celebrated here. And well, for the most part, just the electric vehicles are kind of welcomed and supported. So I don't think gas prices will be going too high over $3 or the rest of the United States. With Austin being a smaller city, it doesn't have any pro sports teams outside of Austin FC that just started. So I definitely miss having the Hawks, the Falcons, or if you're in Houston, you have the Texans and the Rockets to support or go watch their games. And I think most of the sports here are kind of based around UT. So you can always have the UT football team to go watch or they're sporting events. But a pro sports team would be nice to have, but I have to have soccer. Austin, Texas does have a pretty young population since it is a college town with the University of Texas at Austin here. There's St. Edward's University. There are a couple of college campuses around here. But I personally think it's a great city to kind of transition into your post-grad life. Like I said, we moved here right after college. And I thought it was a great place to be because there are so many young people kind of trying to find their place in life. I would definitely say that kind of helps with the open-mindedness of the city because so many people are that young generation that are very educated on everything and just, I guess, aren't very judgmental. So this last con may get us the most hate. But I will say it's been pretty true overall that most Austinites are very protective over Austin and they don't really enjoy people moving here. And they aren't, I mean, they're welcoming but they're not the most supportive of people trying to move here. Yeah, especially online. Like they'll be nice to your face but online they'll rip you to pieces. Yeah, and I get it, like Californians living here are used to their politics and their way of life and their prices of living and changing that may kind of disrupt the way Austin's kind of found in the way it's been operating for a long time. If you are coming from California, just keep it to yourself. Yeah, so you're from Dallas or Houston than the Aliveon? Yeah, that's true. Last probe living in Austin, Texas is that there is no state income tax. We have noticed that a lot of people since the pandemic have been moving here because of that. Yeah, you've probably seen a lot of the tech space moving here like Oracle and Tesla and just some of the other big giants in the tech space coming here for that policy. It is nice to have no state tax when you're taking out of your paycheck. But it makes up for it in the property taxes. Yeah, you'll see the housing and property taxes are kind of elevating because of that policy. So those are all the pros and cons of living in Austin that we could think of. If you guys live in Austin and want to add your thoughts, go ahead and comment any pros and cons that we missed out on in this video so that people visiting or wanting to move here can look at the comments and see what it's all about. If you guys want to see more Austin content, I have a whole playlist with our moving vlogs and just exploring the city and a lot of foodie adventures too. So I will have that link down below and let me know what other Austin videos you want to see next. If you want to see more real-time content, follow me over on my Instagram at so underscore gnarly without the G. And I will see y'all in my next video. Bye!