Moving to Austin.

What it costs to live in Austin

Start with the fact that there is no single Austin median, and the published ones are far enough apart to change the decision. Unlock MLS, the local multiple listing service, put the September 2026 median sales price at 570,958 dollars inside the city of Austin, 4.2 percent more than September 2025, across 777 closed sales, and 421,000 dollars across the five-county Austin-Round Rock-San Marcos metro, 1.4 percent more, across 2,223 sales. Travis County on its own ran 497,400 dollars, 2.6 percent more, across 1,031 sales. Prices are up from a year earlier while sales are down: closed sales fell 12.7 percent in the city and 14.8 percent across the metro, and the report ties the slowdown to rising mortgage rates. Supply barely moved. The city and the metro each ended September with 5.4 months of inventory, 0.3 and 0.1 months less than a year earlier, and Travis County sat at 5.8 months, 0.2 less. Renting is the cheaper way in month to month, and three official measures answer different questions. The Census Bureau’s 2020 to 2024 survey puts the city’s median gross rent, the rent plus the utilities a renter pays, at 1,729 dollars a month. HUD’s fair market rents for fiscal 2027, published as 40th-percentile rents, put the metro at 1,530 dollars for a one-bedroom and 1,817 for a two-bedroom. And leases closed through Unlock MLS in September 2026 had a median of 2,195 dollars inside the city. The full breakdown, from federal price data to three rent measures and the 2026 property tax rates, is in the cost of living in Austin.

Checked October 30, 2026 at the official sources: Unlock MLS, September 2026 · Census QuickFacts · HUD fair market rents

What salary you need to live here

No official source publishes a comfortable salary for Austin, so the useful comparison is what households here earn against what housing here costs. The Census Bureau’s 2020 to 2024 survey puts the city’s median household income at 93,658 dollars, in 2024 dollars, against 80,734 for the US. Against that median, a household earning 70,000 dollars sits below the middle of the city and one earning 100,000 sits above it. Housing decides how far either goes. The median owner with a mortgage spends 2,679 dollars a month on owner costs, against 1,963 nationally, and the median renter pays 1,729 dollars in gross rent, against 1,413. Outside housing, the federal price data works in a household’s favor: the Bureau of Economic Analysis put overall prices across the Austin metro at 98.1 percent of the national level in 2024, with housing rents at 120.4 percent, goods at 93.8, and utilities at 82.0. What a salary buys here depends mostly on whether it has to cover a mortgage inside the city limits or rent farther out.

Checked October 30, 2026 at the official sources: Census QuickFacts · BEA regional price parities

The property tax trade, and what changed for 2026

Texas has no state personal income tax, and the state constitution bars the legislature from taxing individuals’ net incomes. The money comes from elsewhere. Sales tax is 6.25 percent at the state level plus up to 2 percent local, and inside Austin the local share is 1 percent for the city and 1 percent for the Austin metropolitan transit authority, for 8.25 percent in all, per the Texas Comptroller. Property tax is not one rate but a stack of them, set separately by the school district, the city, the county, the health district, and the community college, each adopting its own in late summer or early fall. For 2026, the Travis County Tax Office’s rate file records the City of Austin at 0.579948 dollars per 100 of taxable value, up about 10.7 percent from 0.524017 in 2025, Travis County at 0.38621, up from 0.375845, Travis Central Health at 0.132863, up from 0.118023, and Austin Community College at 0.103643, up from 0.1034. Austin ISD’s 2026 rate was not posted in that file when it was read on October 30, 2026, and its 2025 rate was 0.9252. Together that comes to about 2.13 dollars per 100 of taxable value, against 2.046485 for the five 2025 rates. Two things soften the bill. The rate applies to the value the Travis Central Appraisal District sets, less exemptions, not to what you paid, and the school district portion carries a 140,000-dollar general homestead exemption, with another 60,000 for owners 65 or older or disabled, per the Comptroller. Any taxing unit may add a local option exemption of up to 20 percent of appraised value, and no less than 5,000 dollars. The general deadline to file for an exemption is before May 1.

Checked October 30, 2026 at the official sources: Texas Constitution, Art. 8 · Texas Comptroller, sales tax · Texas Comptroller, city rates · Travis County tax rates · City of Austin tax rates · Texas Comptroller, exemptions · Travis Central Appraisal District

Choosing a part of Austin

This is the decision that sets your rent, your commute, and how often you use your car, and it is the one worth slowing down on. The useful frame is not east versus west but how far you are willing to be from the things you actually do. Central and near-east addresses buy walkability and cost the most per square foot. The northern and far-south suburbs trade that for space and a drive. Travis County is not the whole metro either, and the 76,400-dollar gap between the county median and the metro median in September 2026, per Unlock MLS, is mostly a map of how far out people went to find a price. One practical note for anyone comparing school ratings: district boundaries do not follow city limits, so an Austin address can sit in Austin ISD, Del Valle, Round Rock, Eanes, Leander, or Pflugerville depending on the block. Each area with its price band, character, and trade-offs is in the neighborhood guide.

Utilities, and the one billing quirk to know in your first winter

Inside the city, one City of Austin utility bill can carry charges for electricity, water, wastewater, solid waste, drainage, and street service, depending on where you live. Austin Energy, a service of the City of Austin, charges a 17.35-dollar monthly customer charge plus a four-tier energy rate that climbs with use: 4.872 cents per kilowatt-hour for the first 300, 5.395 through 900, 7.901 through 2,000, and 11.428 above that. On every kilowatt-hour it adds a power supply adjustment of 3.912 cents, a regulatory charge of 1.799 cents, and community benefit charges of 1.097 cents in all. Its own example bill for a typical 860-kilowatt-hour month inside the city comes to 121.94 dollars. That tier structure is why an Austin summer bill does not rise in a straight line. Running the air conditioning through August does not just add kilowatt-hours: every one past 900 in a month is billed at a higher rate, and past 2,000 the energy rate is more than twice the first tier. The quirk worth knowing is on the wastewater side. Austin Water does not bill wastewater on what you use year-round. It sets a fixed monthly charge from your water use across a three-month winter averaging period, which for 2026 to 2027 starts in December and ends in March depending on your billing cycle, then holds that number for the following year no matter how much you water the lawn in July. You need at least 60 consecutive days of use with a minimum of 100 gallons per billing period to qualify, and if you fall under that the residential average defaults to 5,000 gallons. If you arrive in the fall, your winter water habits set your sewer bill for the year.

Checked October 30, 2026 at the official sources: City of Austin Utilities, billing · Austin Energy rates · Austin Water, wastewater averaging

Your first 30 days: the paperwork clock

Two deadlines start the day you move, and they run in a specific order. The Texas Department of Motor Vehicles is blunt about the first: you have 30 days from the time you move here to register your vehicle in the state. Registration in Travis County means a passing emissions inspection first, because Travis is one of 17 Texas counties that still require one. The safety inspection for non-commercial vehicles ended on January 1, 2025, and a 7.50-dollar inspection replacement fee is collected at registration instead. Budget 50.75 dollars for the base registration plus a dollar for TexasSure, 51.75 at the state level, with county fees on top. As a new resident you also pay a sales tax fee on the vehicle, which the Texas Department of Motor Vehicles puts at 90 dollars or the difference between your previous state’s sales tax and the Texas sales tax. First-time registrants complete Form 130-U. The license follows. The Department of Public Safety lets you drive on a valid, unexpired license from another US state, territory, Canadian province, or qualifying country for up to 90 days after moving, and you will need evidence of Texas vehicle registration when you apply, which is why the car goes first. You surrender the out-of-state license, and if it is a valid, unexpired license from another US state, a US territory, or Canada you skip both the knowledge and the skills exams. Texas also has license reciprocity with France, Germany, South Korea, the United Arab Emirates, and Taiwan, and a valid license from one of those skips both exams too, unless you choose to keep the foreign license. The other thing to do inside that window is nothing to do with the state: get on the utility account and check whether your move-in month falls inside the wastewater averaging period.

Checked October 30, 2026 at the official sources: TxDMV, new to Texas · TxDMV, register your vehicle · Texas DPS, moving to Texas

The summer, stated plainly

The heat is not a caveat here, it is a season with a length. The National Weather Service’s 1991-2020 normals for Camp Mabry, Austin’s official reporting site, whose records go back to 1898, put the city at 122.8 days a year at or above 90 degrees, with a normal July high of 96.6 and an August high of 97.8. The same normals period puts 100-degree days at 29 a year, against a long-term average closer to 16 across the full record, which is the warming trend in two numbers. Then there is what actually happened this year. Camp Mabry hit 100 degrees on all 31 days of August 2026, topping out at 107 on the 22nd and the 23rd, and the month averaged 89.4 degrees, 2.9 above normal, on 0.40 inches of rain against a normal of 2.74. Austin gets 36.25 inches of rain in a normal year, and almost none of it in late summer. What this means in practice is that roughly June through September is an indoor-and-water city. Mornings and evenings are the usable hours, shade is a real amenity when you are choosing a place to live, and the air conditioning is not optional. Winter is mild by comparison, with the normals showing 11.9 nights a year at or below freezing.

Cedar fever, the season nobody mentions in the brochure

Austin has a second hard season and it lands in winter. Ashe juniper, called mountain cedar locally, releases pollen in volumes that produce what Baylor Scott & White Health describes as an allergy season running from December to February and peaking in mid-January. Up to 20 percent of Texans react to cedar pollen, per the same source, and plenty of them had no allergies before they arrived. The name oversells one thing and undersells another. It is not really a fever: the Texas A&M Forest Service notes that cedar pollen rarely pushes body temperature above 101.5 degrees, and Baylor Scott & White attributes the warmth to inflammation rather than infection. What it does deliver is congestion, itchy and watering eyes, sore throat, sneezing, headaches, and a fatigue that reads exactly like a cold, which is why newcomers spend their first January convinced they are sick for six weeks. The pollen comes in on cold, dry, windy days behind a front, so the worst mornings are the clear beautiful ones. If you have any history of seasonal allergies, the useful move is to find an allergist before December rather than during it.

Is Austin still growing?

Yes, though more slowly and for different reasons than during the boom. The Census Bureau’s Vintage 2025 estimates put the Austin-Round Rock-San Marcos metro at 2,620,945 people as of July 1, 2025, up 53,796 over the year, about 2.1 percent, which was the sixth largest numeric gain of any US metro. So the growth story is intact, but the composition has changed. The same release notes that metro areas nationally lost 119,205 people to net domestic migration between 2024 and 2025 and made it up through international migration and births. The Bureau does not publish a domestic migration figure for individual metros in that release, so this page does not print one for Austin. What the headline number means for a mover is competition. Supply has not loosened: the city of Austin ended September 2026 with 5.4 months of inventory, 0.3 months less than a year earlier, with the metro also at 5.4 and Travis County at 5.8, each slightly lower than a year before, per Unlock MLS. Prices rose over the same stretch, 4.2 percent inside the city and 1.4 percent across the metro, even as closed sales fell, so this is not a market that got easier to buy into.

Schools, and how to read the ratings

Texas grades every district and campus A through F, and the Texas Education Agency released its 2026 ratings on August 14, 2026, covering 1,202 districts and 9,105 campuses. Statewide, 85 percent of rated campuses earned a C or above and 24 percent of districts and campuses improved on their 2025 mark. Austin ISD came out with an overall B. That district-level letter hides a wide spread, and the spread is the part that matters when you are choosing an address: Burnet and Webb middle schools each received a fifth consecutive F in the same round, which is the point at which state action becomes a live question. As of the Austin Chamber’s write-up of the ratings, the commissioner had not announced one. Two things to hold onto. A district grade is an average of campuses that can range from A to F, so look up the specific schools your block feeds into rather than the district. And the boundaries are not the city boundaries. An Austin mailing address can sit in Austin ISD or in Del Valle, Round Rock, Eanes, Leander, Pflugerville, or Manor, and those districts carry their own ratings and their own tax rates, which land on the same property tax bill.

Getting around, and whether you can skip the car

Mostly you cannot, yet. CapMetro runs the buses and the Red Line commuter rail, and the fares are cheap: 1.25 dollars for a local single ride, 2.50 for a day, and 41.25 for a calendar month, with reduced fares of 0.60, 1.25, and 20.60, an Equifare program at 1.00 a ride and 33.00 a month for qualifying low-income riders, and free rides for anyone under 18. Those prices are about to change. CapMetro’s board approved the first system-wide fare increase since 2015, and from January 10, 2027 a local ride costs 1.50 dollars, a day 3.00, and a month 49.50, with a second increase set for January 2029. Service is improving in specific corridors rather than everywhere: the Rapid 800 and Rapid 837 bus rapid transit lines launched in February 2025 and reached their promised 10-minute frequencies in June 2026, and the Red Line added McKalla station near Q2 Stadium in February 2024 with North Burnet expected in 2027. Light rail is real but distant. Phase 1 is 9.8 miles and 15 stations, with construction targeted for 2027 and passenger service for 2033. Treat it as a reason a neighborhood may be worth more in a decade, not as transportation you will have on arrival. Plan on a car, and let how much you use it be the thing your neighborhood choice buys down.

The civic calendar a new resident actually meets

Austin is both the state capital and the seat of Travis County, so city hall, the county courthouse, and the Texas Capitol sit within about a mile of one another, and city policy and state law do not always point the same way. Everything else here is scheduling. The Legislature meets in regular session in odd-numbered years, while the city, the county, the school district, the health district, and the community college each set a budget and a tax rate in late summer or early fall, which is the stretch that decides your next property tax bill. Voter registration runs through the county, and the Travis County Clerk’s reconciliation for the November 5, 2024 general election recorded 587,090 ballots counted against 925,858 registered voters, about 63 percent. Update your registration at the same time you change your license, since both want the same proof of address.

What people wish they had known

A short list of the things that surprise people in the first year, all of them already established above and worth collecting in one place. The property tax bill does not arrive at closing, it arrives in the fall, and the total is not known until each entity adopts its rate: as of October 30, 2026, the county tax office’s file carried 2026 rates for the city, the county, the health district, and the community college, but not yet for Austin ISD. The electricity bill is tiered, so the August number is not the July number plus a little. The sewer bill is set by your winter water use and then frozen for the year, which means a November arrival makes a decision without knowing it. The car deadline is 30 days and it runs ahead of the license deadline of 90, because you need the registration to apply. Travis County still requires an emissions test even though Texas dropped the safety inspection in January 2025. Cedar season starts in December and it is not a cold. And the single most expensive misunderstanding is the word Austin itself: the city median and the metro median were nearly 150,000 dollars apart in September 2026, so a figure quoted without its geography cannot be budgeted against. Ask which Austin, and ask which month.