How much money do you need to move to Austin?

For ongoing costs, MIT’s Living Wage Calculator puts the basic-needs income for one adult in the Austin metro at 49,322 dollars a year before taxes and at 112,866 for two working adults with two children, as of February 2026. For the move itself, budget the first month and deposit on a one-bedroom running roughly 1,260 to 1,421 dollars depending on which tracker you read, plus about 140 dollars in state vehicle fees and new resident tax at the Texas Department of Motor Vehicles, before county fees and the emissions test.

What is the average rent in Austin?

It depends on the tracker, and the gap is more than a hundred dollars. As of mid-September 2026 Zumper put an Austin one-bedroom at about 1,260 dollars a month and a two-bedroom at about 1,600. RentCafe’s end-of-August 2026 figures were 1,421 and 1,812, with an average of 1,641 across all unit sizes. Neighborhood moves the number far more than the source does.

How long do I have to register my car and get a Texas license after moving?

Thirty days for the car and 90 for the license, and they run in that order. The Texas Department of Motor Vehicles gives you 30 days from the time you move here to register your vehicle, which in Travis County requires a passing emissions inspection first. The Department of Public Safety lets you drive on a valid out-of-state license for up to 90 days, and you need proof of Texas registration when you apply, so do the car first.

Are property taxes high in Austin?

Yes, and they are the other side of having no state income tax. For tax year 2025, the last year with every rate adopted, the Travis County Tax Office recorded five rates inside the city: Austin ISD 0.9252, City of Austin 0.524017, Travis County 0.375845, Central Health 0.118023, and Austin Community College 0.1034 dollars per 100 of taxable value, for a combined 2.046485, or just over two percent. The City of Austin adopted 0.579948 for 2026-27, up about 10.7 percent, while Travis County had not adopted its 2026 rate as of mid-September and says all rates should be posted by October 3. The rate applies to taxable value after exemptions, and the school district portion carries a 140,000-dollar general homestead exemption.

How hot does Austin actually get?

The National Weather Service’s 1991-2020 normals for Camp Mabry give Austin 122.8 days a year at or above 90 degrees and 29 at or above 100, with a normal August high of 97.8. Recent summers have run hotter than the normal: August 2026 hit 100 degrees on all 31 days, peaked at 107 on the 22nd and 23rd, and delivered 0.40 inches of rain against a normal of 2.74.

What is cedar fever and when does it happen?

Cedar fever is an allergic reaction to Ashe juniper pollen, and Baylor Scott & White Health puts the season from December to February with a mid-January peak, affecting up to 20 percent of Texans. It is not really a fever. The Texas A&M Forest Service notes cedar pollen rarely raises body temperature above 101.5 degrees, and the warmth comes from inflammation rather than infection. The symptoms, congestion, itchy eyes, sore throat, and heavy fatigue, read like a cold that will not end.

Do you need a car in Austin?

For most addresses, yes. CapMetro fares are cheap at 1.25 dollars a ride, 2.50 for a day pass, and 41.25 for a 31-day pass, with riders under 18 free, and the Rapid 800 and Rapid 837 bus rapid transit lines reached 10-minute frequencies in June 2026. But light rail is a decade out, with construction targeted for 2027 and passenger service for 2033, so a genuinely car-free life works today only in a handful of central neighborhoods.

What are the schools like in Austin?

Mixed, and the district letter hides the spread. The Texas Education Agency released 2026 ratings on August 14, 2026, covering 1,202 districts and 9,105 campuses, with 85 percent of rated campuses earning a C or above statewide. Austin ISD came out with an overall B, while Burnet and Webb middle schools each received a fifth consecutive F. Look up the specific campuses your address feeds, and check which district you are actually in, because an Austin address can sit in Del Valle, Round Rock, Eanes, Leander, Pflugerville, or Manor.

What are the downsides of moving to Austin?

Four, in rough order of how often they surprise people. The heat is a season, not a stretch: 122.8 days a year at or above 90 in the National Weather Service normals, and August 2026 hit 100 degrees on every day of the month. Cedar fever runs December to February. Property taxes take back much of what you save on the missing income tax, with the five tax-year-2025 rates inside the city summing to 2.046485 dollars per 100 of taxable value. And the city is car-dependent, with light rail not carrying passengers until 2033.

Know · Moving guide · Austin

Moving to Austin.

Line illustration of an open cardboard moving box with a small vermilion shipping label

The honest version of this move is four numbers and two seasons. MIT’s Living Wage Calculator puts the basic-needs income for one adult in the Austin metro at 49,322 dollars a year and for two working adults with two children at 112,866, as of February 2026. Unlock MLS put the August 2026 median sales price at 560,000 dollars inside the city of Austin and 412,000 across the five-county metro, which is a gap wide enough to change whether you can buy at all. Texas charges no state income tax and makes it back on property, so the tax you escape and the tax you inherit are close to a wash for a homeowner. And the calendar has two things newcomers reliably underestimate: a summer that hit 100 degrees every single day this August, and a juniper pollen season that starts in December. Underneath all of that sits a paperwork clock, 30 days for the car and 90 for the license, that starts the day you arrive. Here is the whole thing, with the month attached to every figure, because all of them move.

Carissa Spisak

Writer, The Austin Newsletter

Updated September 2026

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 August 2026 median sales price at 560,000 dollars inside the city of Austin, 4.3 percent less than August 2025, across 844 closed sales, and 412,000 dollars across the five-county Austin-Round Rock-San Marcos metro, 6.4 percent less, across 2,501 sales. Travis County on its own ran 489,000 dollars, also 6.4 percent less, across 1,111 sales. All three are down from a year earlier, so the softening is real, and it runs across the metro, deeper outside the city limits than inside them. What is not softening is supply. The city ended August with 4.6 months of inventory, 1.1 months less than a year earlier, and both the metro and Travis County sat at 5.1 months, also down. Falling prices and thinning inventory at the same time is the combination to understand before you plan a search. Renting is the cheaper way in, and the listing trackers disagree by more than a hundred dollars. As of mid-September 2026 Zumper put the Austin one-bedroom at about 1,260 dollars a month and the two-bedroom at about 1,600. RentCafe’s end-of-August figures were 1,421 and 1,812, against an average of 1,641 across all unit sizes. Call it roughly 1,260 to 1,421 for a one-bedroom. The spread between neighborhoods is larger than the spread between sources. The full breakdown, including what groceries and health care do to a budget, is in the cost of living in Austin.

What salary you need to live comfortably

The most checkable answer comes from MIT’s Living Wage Calculator, which prices a basic-needs budget for the Austin-Round Rock-San Marcos metro by household size and publishes every line item behind it. One adult with no children needs 49,322 dollars a year before taxes, which is 23.71 dollars an hour. Two working adults with two children need 112,866 dollars between them. The same family on one income needs 83,189, and about four fifths of the 29,677-dollar gap between those two is child care, because the model assumes the adult at home provides it. Those are floors, not comfortable salaries. The budget carries no restaurant meals, no vacation, and no retirement saving, and its housing line is rent at the federal fair-market level rather than a mortgage on a 560,000-dollar house. The line items are worth reading in their own right. For a single adult the model budgets 17,779 dollars a year for housing, 9,016 for transportation, 4,047 for food, 3,075 for medical, and 7,245 for taxes. For the working family of four, child care alone is 23,856 dollars, more than that household spends on housing. The figures were last updated in February 2026.

Is 70,000 dollars a good salary in Austin? Is 100,000?

Both are real questions people ask, and the MIT floors make them answerable. Seventy thousand dollars sits comfortably above the 49,322 a single adult needs for the basics, so for one person with no children it is a good salary: it covers the budget with roughly 20,000 dollars of before-tax room for the things the model leaves out, which is savings, travel, and eating in a city worth eating in. It is a much tighter number for a household with children, since a single earner supporting two adults and two kids needs 83,189 before anything discretionary. A hundred thousand for one person is genuinely comfortable here and opens up buying, though at the August 2026 city median of 560,000 dollars you are looking at the metro or the outer neighborhoods rather than central Austin. For a family of four on one income, 100,000 clears the 83,189 floor but not by much once a mortgage replaces the model’s rent line. The variable that decides all of this is housing, and housing is a geography question.

The property tax trade, and what changed for 2026

Texas has no state personal income tax, which is written into the state constitution and is the single biggest financial draw of the move. The state makes it back on property and consumption. Sales tax runs 6.25 percent at the state level plus up to 2 percent local, for the 8.25 percent maximum that applies in Austin, 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 tax year 2025, the last year with every rate adopted, the Travis County Tax Office recorded Austin ISD at 0.9252 dollars per 100 of taxable value, the City of Austin at 0.524017, Travis County at 0.375845, Central Health at 0.118023, and Austin Community College at 0.1034. That is 2.046485 in total, so a homesteaded owner inside the city was paying just over two percent of taxable value. The 2026 bill is only partly known. The City of Austin adopted a rate of 0.579948 dollars per 100 dollars of taxable value for its 2026-27 fiscal year, up from 0.524017, an increase of about 10.7 percent in the city’s share alone. Travis County had published a no-new-revenue rate of 0.378179 and a voter-approval rate of 0.386210 in its August 2026 notice without adopting one, and the county says all rates should be posted by October 3. Two things soften the bill. The rate applies to taxable value after 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. Cities and counties may add a local option exemption of up to 20 percent. File before May 1.

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 77,000-dollar gap between the county median and the metro median in August 2026 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, electricity, water, wastewater, trash, and drainage arrive on one City of Austin utility bill. Austin Energy charges a 16.50-dollar monthly customer charge plus a four-tier energy rate that climbs with use: 4.640 cents per kilowatt hour for the first 300, 5.138 through 900, 7.525 through 2,000, and 10.884 above that, with a power supply adjustment of 4.118 cents and a regulatory charge of 1.338 cents layered on every kilowatt hour. 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, it pushes the last ones into a rate 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 three consecutive winter billing cycles between mid-November and mid-March, 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 period to qualify, and if you fall under that the average defaults to 5,000 gallons. If you arrive in the fall, your winter water habits set your sewer bill for the year.

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 annual safety inspection for non-commercial vehicles ended on January 1, 2025 and was replaced with a 7.50-dollar Inspection Program Replacement Fee collected at registration. Budget 50.75 dollars for the base registration plus a dollar for TexasSure, county fees on top, and roughly 90 dollars for the new resident tax, which is charged instead of the difference between your old state’s sales tax and Texas’s. 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. Licenses from the other reciprocity countries may have the exams waived rather than automatically skipping them, so check yours before you go. 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.

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. The people kept arriving and the housing supply did not keep pace: the city of Austin ended August 2026 with 4.6 months of inventory, 1.1 months less than a year earlier, with the metro and Travis County both down to 5.1 months. Prices fell over the same stretch, so this is not a market that got easier to search, only one that got a little cheaper 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 pass, and 41.25 for a 31-day pass, 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. A proposed increase in 2027 would be the first since 2015. 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 at a cost above 8.2 billion dollars, 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 rate is not final until each entity adopts one, which in 2026 meant the city was set while the county, the school district, the health district, and the community college were not, as of mid-September. 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 148,000 dollars apart in August 2026, so a figure quoted without its geography cannot be budgeted against. Ask which Austin, and ask which month.

Common questions

How much money do you need to move to Austin?: For ongoing costs, MIT’s Living Wage Calculator puts the basic-needs income for one adult in the Austin metro at 49,322 dollars a year before taxes and at 112,866 for two working adults with two children, as of February 2026. For the move itself, budget the first month and deposit on a one-bedroom running roughly 1,260 to 1,421 dollars depending on which tracker you read, plus about 140 dollars in state vehicle fees and new resident tax at the Texas Department of Motor Vehicles, before county fees and the emissions test.
Is 70,000 dollars a good salary in Austin?: For a single person, yes. It clears the 49,322 dollars MIT’s February 2026 budget says one adult needs for the basics in this metro, with room left for the things that budget excludes, which are restaurant meals, travel, and savings. For a household with children it is tight: a single earner supporting two adults and two kids needs 83,189 dollars in the same model before anything discretionary.
What is the average rent in Austin?: It depends on the tracker, and the gap is more than a hundred dollars. As of mid-September 2026 Zumper put an Austin one-bedroom at about 1,260 dollars a month and a two-bedroom at about 1,600. RentCafe’s end-of-August 2026 figures were 1,421 and 1,812, with an average of 1,641 across all unit sizes. Neighborhood moves the number far more than the source does.
How long do I have to register my car and get a Texas license after moving?: Thirty days for the car and 90 for the license, and they run in that order. The Texas Department of Motor Vehicles gives you 30 days from the time you move here to register your vehicle, which in Travis County requires a passing emissions inspection first. The Department of Public Safety lets you drive on a valid out-of-state license for up to 90 days, and you need proof of Texas registration when you apply, so do the car first.
Are property taxes high in Austin?: Yes, and they are the other side of having no state income tax. For tax year 2025, the last year with every rate adopted, the Travis County Tax Office recorded five rates inside the city: Austin ISD 0.9252, City of Austin 0.524017, Travis County 0.375845, Central Health 0.118023, and Austin Community College 0.1034 dollars per 100 of taxable value, for a combined 2.046485, or just over two percent. The City of Austin adopted 0.579948 for 2026-27, up about 10.7 percent, while Travis County had not adopted its 2026 rate as of mid-September and says all rates should be posted by October 3. The rate applies to taxable value after exemptions, and the school district portion carries a 140,000-dollar general homestead exemption.
How hot does Austin actually get?: The National Weather Service’s 1991-2020 normals for Camp Mabry give Austin 122.8 days a year at or above 90 degrees and 29 at or above 100, with a normal August high of 97.8. Recent summers have run hotter than the normal: August 2026 hit 100 degrees on all 31 days, peaked at 107 on the 22nd and 23rd, and delivered 0.40 inches of rain against a normal of 2.74.
What is cedar fever and when does it happen?: Cedar fever is an allergic reaction to Ashe juniper pollen, and Baylor Scott & White Health puts the season from December to February with a mid-January peak, affecting up to 20 percent of Texans. It is not really a fever. The Texas A&M Forest Service notes cedar pollen rarely raises body temperature above 101.5 degrees, and the warmth comes from inflammation rather than infection. The symptoms, congestion, itchy eyes, sore throat, and heavy fatigue, read like a cold that will not end.
Do you need a car in Austin?: For most addresses, yes. CapMetro fares are cheap at 1.25 dollars a ride, 2.50 for a day pass, and 41.25 for a 31-day pass, with riders under 18 free, and the Rapid 800 and Rapid 837 bus rapid transit lines reached 10-minute frequencies in June 2026. But light rail is a decade out, with construction targeted for 2027 and passenger service for 2033, so a genuinely car-free life works today only in a handful of central neighborhoods.
Is Austin still growing?: Yes. 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, and the sixth largest numeric gain among US metros. The composition shifted, though: nationally, metro areas lost 119,205 people to net domestic migration between 2024 and 2025 and grew on international migration and births instead.
What are the schools like in Austin?: Mixed, and the district letter hides the spread. The Texas Education Agency released 2026 ratings on August 14, 2026, covering 1,202 districts and 9,105 campuses, with 85 percent of rated campuses earning a C or above statewide. Austin ISD came out with an overall B, while Burnet and Webb middle schools each received a fifth consecutive F. Look up the specific campuses your address feeds, and check which district you are actually in, because an Austin address can sit in Del Valle, Round Rock, Eanes, Leander, Pflugerville, or Manor.
What are the downsides of moving to Austin?: Four, in rough order of how often they surprise people. The heat is a season, not a stretch: 122.8 days a year at or above 90 in the National Weather Service normals, and August 2026 hit 100 degrees on every day of the month. Cedar fever runs December to February. Property taxes take back much of what you save on the missing income tax, with the five tax-year-2025 rates inside the city summing to 2.046485 dollars per 100 of taxable value. And the city is car-dependent, with light rail not carrying passengers until 2033.

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Carissa.