We are closing on our home tomorrow and then have 60 days to continue occupying here in Tampa while we relocate out of state.


We're looking at a home in Northwest Texas (not in Abilene but that "area"), hoping to fly out that way next week and see it in person. Had some questions:


HOME INSURANCE


What sort of insurance coverage would you recommend for that area (i.e. hailstorms, tornado, flood, etc) Obviously any insurance company we talk to is going to try and sell us more than we need because they're salespeople.


PROPERTY TAXES


Property taxes seem higher than we're paying here in the Tampa area (over 3x as much). This home is assessed higher than our property in Tampa, but still a fairly large difference that doesn't match the appraisal differential between the properties.


ELECTRICAL COSTS


And then electricity costs in the area. Right now in Tampa we're paying $0.06196/kWh for the first 1,000 kWh and then $0.07196 for anything over that. Then they tack on a fuel charge of $0.0379 /kWh for the first 1K and $0.04791/kWh for anything over.


Plus a few other odds and ends tossed into the bill that add an additional $35/month in costs.


CITY WATER/SEWER COSTS


And right now we're on a well and septic system, but this home would be city water and sewer, unsure what to expect that bill to be.

Only thing I can talk to is they can't lie about the stats they give and you can look them up on your own, go a little lower if you want. Tornado warnings will come a dozen times a year, but even the biggest are only 1 mile wide. You will get more than a few damaging hail storms in your time, some that aren't afraid to throw baseballs or worse at you, if it is bad enough your roof is ****ed too.(sorry no actual advice other than keep room in your garage in the Spring-Fall for 2 cars not stuff.)

Nobody says Northwest Texas. Northwest Texas is Dumas, 5k peopl in the panhandle.

*depending which direction you head from Abilene the region names change.

You're in "The Big Country"

North-South Plains
West- West Texas
South- Hill Country
East- North Texas

Someone else mentioned getting hail coverage for my vehicle, so thanks for the headsup!

Also, we were planning to use the garage for the car and not stuff. Always irked me how so many people have four cars in their driveway and then boxes of **** filling the garage. But I've never owned a garage so I guess I can't judge too harshly lol

Knish, I have to tell you something that I never told anyone else before. I made a move on Chan.

Is it too late to try and talk you out of it?

You little punk. I'm not playing for the thrill of ****ing victory here. I have a mortgage, alimony, my kids EAT! I play for money

We haven't even seen the property in person yet. The area is completely foreign to us, so feel free to share whatever you can as we haven't bought anything yet.

3 important things to remember about the north part of West Texas:
1 Buddy Holly was from Lubbock.
2 Roy Orbison was from Wink.
3 Waylon Jennings was from Littlefield.

West Texas gets crazy cold, windy too, dress warmly. Honestly I think of it as desolate godforsaken country, and me a longtime San Antonio type, but all the best to you out there!

Define "crazy cold"? We are originally from Massachusetts, so grew up dealing with multiple feet of snow in our storms, black ice, wind chills that would reach negative temperatures (we were closer to the NH border)

Hell, even living in Tampa we get some winter nights where it hits the mid 30's, and it's flat here too so you'll feel the wind coming.

Yes, property taxes are very high in Texas. There is no state income tax, and as much as policymakers in Texas would like to pretend that you can run a state on promises of salvation and air, police and firefighters still expect to be paid, schools are still supposed to dole out what passes for an education, and someone has to fix the roads that everyone barrels down at 15 miles an hour over the speed limit.

As a former Mass-hole I believe a yellow light means "hurry the **** up" so 15 miles over the speed limit is what I'm accustomed to lol.

What does "crazy cold" mean? Is it like "oh no, it's close to zero" or where the minus 30 wind chill might actually hurt?
Depending on where you live, almost nobody might ever use their garages to park their cars.
In our neighborhood, all the homes look more or less the same with a double garage and outside of the winter months you never see any cars in there.

Crazy cold means its nothing really compared to the NE, but completely shocking to the rest of the state. That area is edge of the great plains and typically higher elevation. Very strong winds, hail, some snow and rapidly changing temps. My experience is based on Lubbock not Abilene so it may be somewhat milder there.

My experience passing through. Windy in the wintertime. Hot and somewhat humid (not like Tampa, I suppose) in the summers. Not crazy cold; occasional snow, but mostly right on that line where it's freezing rain when it does have a storm. Worse, IMO.

Don't forget the Texas electric grid fiasco a couple years ago. I'm sure that's all been fixed by now, and everyone will have safe, reliable electricity.

Huge tracts of nothing out there. Not much around to go do. Generally peaceful and quiet small-town sorta areas.

Good BBQ and TexMex.

Great! You should feel right at home. (Caveat: as with most states, it's a good idea to get your in-state plates on your car before you start tearing up the road like a local...)

"Lubbock or leave it" -- Butch Hancock

Good luck, where ever you land!

I've already started singing DEEP IN THE HEAAAART OF TEXAS!

Getting the clap timing down is obviously the most important part of the song.

Also, you are just south enough to not get the dust storms of the panhandle, but you'll still get something every couple years. 50mph winds and 50 ft visibility, not exaggerating. It is cool just watching a wall of orange dust roll in like something you'd see in the movies.

I'm already doing my research for what to expect when we move out West

Question: Why are you moving to Northwest Tx ?

Is it work, retirement, or family related reasons ?

Everything feeds off the BIG money in petroleum so there is a lot of money to be offered in any field there, and again nobody calls it northwest texas.

We bought our first home in Tampa 5 years ago. We're actually in the city bordering the north of Tampa. It was all green and open fields. Then the influx of developers came. Now it's all concrete and traffic lights, overcrowding due to overdevelopment of new housing communities.

We prefer a slower, quieter lifestyle, small town, low traffic, but within striking distance to a larger city if needs be.

We were able to get close to 3x what we paid for our home 5 years ago, and are now looking at 15 different states (everything from Kansas to Virginia, inbetween and south.

I work remotely and the small town we found has high speed internet, low cost of living, we can get a larger home than we had here in Florida for a good price and get away from the hustle and bustle. My wife and I are mostly shut-ins anyway. We don't attend big events, it's too people-ey out there.

At the moment we're just going to look at this place and see if we like it enough to choose it. We have around 30 homes saved on Zillow (although 12 of them are already in pending status).

So we narrowed down our top picks and we're hitting this one first and if it won't work then we'll go the next and so forth. We're not attached to any specific state, I don't need to have live PLO games nearby (although I wouldn't complain), we just want some space between us and neighbors and some peace and quiet.

:: applause ::

My absolute favorite scene

John Turturro absolutely kills it.