Well I’ve done my research and Austin is the place for me. It’s my music mecca. An outdoorsy city. Hula Hut. No more New York winters. Perfect place for a 25 year old and I’ve fallen in love with it. Planning on a Jan-Feb move and I was honestly wondering if anyone had advice on specific areas in Austin I should look at for my future residence. As of now I plan on renting an apartment (don’t really want to spend more than 850 a month) and I would like to be close to downtown but I don’t a) want to live in a crappy area and b) pay out the nose for a place. I plan on being a teacher (high school history if all works out) so I won’t have any clue where I’ll be working yet, so I’m not overly concerned about that aspect. I’ve been lurking for awhile so I know you guys won’t leave me (too) astray. I plan on being down there for a weekend mid-November and I would love to be able to go there with a list of specific places to look at, rather than just wandering around. So any advice in that department would be greatly appreciated. And I would also love to hear what your favorite spot in Austin is. Bar, restaurant, trail, ally, whatever. Thanks for any help.
Yee-haw! Welcome to Texas!
How picky are you? Do you have to have a really new gated complex with amenities like W/D connections and dishwashers or are you OK with older, funkier places? If it’s the latter, there’s lots of central places you can get for $850 or under; if it’s got to be new, you might have to go out aways. I had a two bedroom in Clarksville (a really nice section of Austin) for $610 up until January. It was an old unit built in the forties but I was comfortble. Austin has very few truly bad areas of town so chances are you can find something.
Geography of Austin: IH35 and Mopac (or Loop 1) run north-south and the river separates north Austin from South Austin. Anything west of 35 between Research to the north and Ben White to the South is reasonably central. If you wanna be really central, I’d say the north boundary is maybe North Loop or Koenig (pronounced Kay-nig) and the south boundary would be Olftorf. The river is in between. North of the river, east of 35 can get a little dodgy in some places but is rapidly gentrifying (I just bought there) and you can find some deals (but you definitely need to check it out). South of the river, east of 35 is kinda crappy. Riverside Dr. is a student ghetto with lots of tejano clubs that occasionally have shootings, etc. But Riverside west of 35 is OK. BTW, anything west of Mopac is great but may be out of your price range.
Here’s a map of Austin neighborhoods (PDF). Hope it helps. If you have any more specific questions, I do a lot of driving in Austin neighborhoods and know them really well. I also spend most of my time central so I know a ton about gyms, amenities, etc.
Oh, and my favorite spot in Austin is Town Lake. I spend hours out on the water. I don’t know if you’ve checked out the Hike&Bike trai yet but it’s a ten mile loop that runs around the lake and is an awesome place to run. Restaurant is Maudies Tex-Mex but there’s tons of great Tex-Mex in town. Bar would be either hanging out on 4th St. or the pubs on West Sixth St. I think Sixth St. proper has gotten of boring but if you’re 25, you might still enjoy it.
Joe’s Generic Bar, 6th St.
I’ll just add to this that I’m currently watching a news report on crime in this area and they say that this aqrea is responsible for 10% of the burglaries in all of Austin. And there are prostitutes and drug dealers working the streets. So I"d recommend avoiding it.
The Arboretum has a nice park and shopping area, but that’s to the North. The Oasis has a nice view of Lake Travis to the west, so worth at least one visit. Generally housing prices are climbing in Austin, but you get what you pay for. Nice, safe neighborhoods with good schools will command a premium. I’d do some serious apartment shopping and don’t be afraid to negotiate with a manager on your lease… maybe get a few months free rent. But also beware the dangers of rising rents at the end of your lease (although if you are fine with moving, or were planning to move anyway, this could work in your favor). In North Austin, $850 should get you a newly built one-bedroom on Metric, or perhaps a two-bedroom for an older place.
I live out in the Far West area (NW Austin, just west of MoPac). I have a really nice 1BR for <$700 a month. The area is full of students, but mostly grad students, so it’s quite pleasant. It’s very close to the Arboretum area The Controvert mentioned, and there’s lots of other shopping/dining options. I definitely like living out here. The only downside is that it’s not that close to downtown. It’s only a 7 minute drive, but who wants to drive to 6th street on the weekend? Although on that note (and I’m sure you’ll discover this soon, as we’re in the same age range), 4th street is at least 5x better than 6th street on the weekends.
Thanks for all the advice. Needless to say choosing to move to a place 1500 miles away from where you’re living now can be a bit daunting, so I really appreciate the help (especially concerning the neighborhoods).
Right now, I’m pretty much just looking for a place that would be good for about a year just to settle myself into the area. So to be honest, I’m not picky at all, it’s just the matter of getting a decent place I can happily call home for awhile. My ultimate goal of course is to buy, but I’m sure once I scrap the cash together Austin will have blown up to beyond my means.
I’ve already done my far bit of wandering around 6th (on a Monday night though so it was dead to say the least), but it brings up a question. How’s the college population in Austin? Annoying or can it easily avoidable? I’m honestly a bit wary about moving to a place with such a big uni and don’t know what kind of effect (if any) they can have on the community at large.
How about traffic? Granted, I’m used to New York City traffic so wherever I go there’s some sort of problem and hold up, but I know that Austin is growing and was wondering what kind of effect that it’s having on traffic. Hell, as long as it’s not like Houston traffic I’ll be happy.
I’m sure I’ll have some more questions once I delve some more into apartment hunting, but writing a thesis can have a profound negative impact on your free time. Thanks again for all the help!
Are you sure that you really wouldn’t prefer to live somewhere (anywhere) else? The problem is that hundreds of thousands of folks just like yourself have also decided that Austin is the greatest place on earth, and as a result, it’s not anymore. We have horrific traffic and crime now and really don’t need anymore. You’ll just be moving from one screwed up place to another. Please don’t bother. Thank you.
In my opinion, it’s basically a positive. Most of the obnoxious college students confine themselves to 6th street on Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays, so if you go elsewhere (even just a few blocks elsewhere downtown), you can basically avoid them. And on the upside, Austin punches above its weight as far as live music, etc. is concerned, and I’m sure a lot of that is due to the presence of the university.
Yeah, unless you get a place in West Campus or a big student apartment complex, it’s not a problem. And the presence of the universtiy means we have access to a lot of cool stuff.
Traffic is crappy partly because IH35 is a major route down to Mexico. Plus, the east/west connections between 35 and Mopac are poor. But, unless you live way out in the burbs, I don’t think it’s much of a problem. (caveat: I live a mile from down town and work just on the other side of the river, so I don’t often see traffic at it’s worst) If you’re central, you can bike a lot of places.
If you’re trying to get a job teaching, you may be stuck doing the substitue thing for a while. BTW, if you have any questions about the high schools, I can give you the scoop, I know a lot about the school district. If you don’t have luck with AISD, try Pflugerville, Round Rock, and Leander ISDs. Those are all suburban areas of Austin and growing like crazy. Leander’s talking about needing 22 new schools over the next ten years.
If arguments like that worked I wouldn’t have been forced out of the neighborhood I grew up in because of the rise in prices caused by yokels who decided that New York was the end-all be-all, thus driving up rent to the point where if you had a modest income you would have to choose between rent or food. So I do apologize because I honestly feel your pain, but don’t worry I won’t bring too many of my gang-banging buddies and I’ll try to limit myself to 3 Hummers.
I was actually thinking about trying the Leander district first. Friend of mine used to be a 3rd grade teacher there and enjoyed it (and mentioned that in her experience Leander paid better than AISD). So yeah, I guess I’ll just see how everything works out. Thanks a bunch.
Thanks for nothing then.
Ah, the “Austin ain’t what it was 20 years ago” folks. They’re right. But others were saying the same thing 20 years ago–just after the current complainers moved in.
(Houstonian here, who hasn’t spent nearly enough time in Austin.) Have fun. And remember to Keep Austin Weird!
Native Austinite, just returned from 12 year exile in Boston. I live just east of Mopac up on Parmer Lane. Which used to be furthest northern Travis County, but now is just “North Austin.”
If you are looking to work in Leander, you need to move way up north. (MilTan’s neighborhood is probably a good one for you to research.) Morning traffic north-south in the city just sucks, whether you’re on 35 or Mopac. I tend to go to work after 10 am for this very reason. As a teacher you would battle morning traffic, so I’d recommend making your commute as short as possible.
Hell, I teach at UT, and I don’t see undergrads that much. The obvious college types tend to stay around campus, and 6th. But chances are everywhere you go, you’ll encounter someone doing something at UT. It isn’t an insufferable college town (outside of West Campus, of course).
I wish I could be of assistance re: the job thing - the superintendent is on our faculty, but I barely know him. I have a lot of friends teaching HS in AISD. It is a very difficult road to hoe with NCLB threatening to close/reconstitute several schools. My friends mostly teach in the northeast part of town, and it’s reform after reform there. Makes the job less fun. But they love the kids.
If I may borrow from another SDMB poster, “Lock Your Shit Up.”
Yeah, the sensible side of me says to head a bit away from the city, but the 25 year old in me says to get as close to it as possible. From what I’ve gathered, I think I’ll be looking mostly in the NWish area of Austin.
Care to enlighten me?
Oh, you’re close enough. You can get downtown via Mopac in about 15 minutes outside of rush hour. Austin is a driving town; you’ll have to drive everywhere. During rush hour, it’ll take a while, but there are alternate routes, like Shoal Creek Boulevard and Lamar Boulevard. They’re not necessarily faster but you will have the illusion that it’s faster, because the traffic moves on those routes.
I-35 congestion is enough to convince most people to commute on the Mopac side of the city (west) rather than central or east. If you just wanted to be near downtown, there are a number of developments just east of I-35 and near downtown. El Mercado and East 11th used to be notorious areas but they are rapidly becoming gentrified. I’m still not sure how I feel about that…