TEXAS, USA — Get ready to make room for more. Dwellics, a firm that says it specializes in city data, has put out a list to the rest of the country, telling Americans where they should consider moving if they're able to work in one place and lay their head down in another.
If you look at the top 50 slots on that top 100 list, Texas is over-represented, with 17 Texas cities highly recommended as good locations to live for remote workers from elsewhere. That’s more than any other state in the top 50.
Here’s the list of Texas cities and where they rank on the list:
- Sugarland #4
- Lakeway #6
- Frisco #7
- Murphy #8
- Brushy Creek #13
- Cedar Park #15
- Helotes #18
- The Woodlands #22
- Coppell #24
- Missouri #25
- Selma #28
- Plano #31
- Wylie #32
- Flower Mound #37
- Allen #38
- Austin #39
- Cibolo #40
Cost of living a factor
Dwellics says one of the factors the firm considers for this mover’s guide is living expenses.
But one remote working family that recently transplanted to our state says—indeed—everything is bigger in Texas. And that includes the cost of living, which turned out to be much higher here than Megan Lovelace and her family expected.
“We tried to do a lot of homework just because this is something we had been considering for a couple of years, so it wasn't a total shock. But you never really know cost of living until you get there and you're on the ground," said Lovelace.
Thankfully, for Lovelace and her family, they bought a house before the pandemic run-up in prices.
A new analysis by Zillow shows the housing market, just in Texas in 2021, grew in value by $506 billion. The state’s biggest jump in value came in the D-FW market, which went up $151 billion in 2021.
But could huge increases in mortgages and rent start to slow the domestic migration to Texas?
University of Texas at Austin Sociology Professor Jennifer Glass said, “I think the housing pressures in other parts of the country were part of what made us look good and that's disappearing. I can tell you right now that I know in Dallas and in Austin it's getting really hard to find a place. And we're starting to look a lot more like California and New York than we probably want to. So, that advantage is probably going to start to trickle away.”
Listen to much more from Professor Glass and Lovelace is in the latest episode of WFAA’s Y’all-itics podcast.