Moving to Texas from Montana, help!

I lived in the College Station area for 30+ years. 2 hours due east of Austin; 4 hrs due south of Dallas and 2 hours due north of Houston. Home of Texas A&M University and their excellent vet school. Hotter than Hades for 9 months out of the year. Quite a few barns in the area for boarding and equestrian properties for sale, including my farm. :slight_smile: Austin is fabulous but Pilot Point is where the major cow/reining types are such as the McQuaids and McCutcheons. Good luck on your search. Property taxes are higher in TX than even Cali…

I lived in the College Station area for 30+ years. 2 hours due east of Austin; 4 hrs due south of Dallas and 2 hours due north of Houston. Home of Texas A&M University and their excellent vet school. Hotter than Hades for 9 months out of the year. Quite a few barns in the area for boarding and equestrian properties for sale, including my farm. :slight_smile: Austin is fabulous but Pilot Point is where the major cow/reining types are such as the McQuaids and McCutcheons. Good luck on your search. Property taxes are higher in TX than even Cali…

I lived in the College Station area for 30+ years. 2 hours due east of Austin; 4 hrs due south of Dallas and 2 hours due north of Houston. Home of Texas A&M University and their excellent vet school. Hotter than Hades for 9 months out of the year. Quite a few barns in the area for boarding and equestrian properties for sale, including my farm. :slight_smile: Austin is fabulous but Pilot Point is where the major cow/reining types are such as the McQuaids and McCutcheons. Good luck on your search. Property taxes are higher in TX than even Cali…

Texas property taxes are CRAZY HIGH!!

Too funny!! My husband and I moved from Bozeman to Texas… For a week!! We left years ago, but COL drove us out, too. We were going to move to Austin and were there for a week before the heat melted me into a miserable mess. For real. The traffic, the commute, the heat. I was so miserable, laying on the floor -because we had no furniture- wondering what we had done.

My wonderful husband packed us up and we left. Pricey learning experience! :slight_smile: I always joke if we’d moved in the winter we would have stayed. So, don’t underestimate the weather.

Best of luck to you!

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back to the flooding… not in the Austin area but a bridge on the Pecos River that was over fifty feet above a river was washed out… the center pier was wiped out by a wall of water that was 96 feet

1954 flood, the Pecos River crested at the highway bridge twice, first at 82 feet on June 27 at 7:30 a.m., when it took out both steel spans and washed away a car that was stalled on the bridge. The second crest of 96 feet came the next day at 1:30 a.m., when it washed out the center pier.

https://www.texascooppower.com/texas-stories/history/pecos-river-flood-of-1954

regarding property taxes, high but land is cheap, even housing is cheap compared to many states. I know of many former Californians who came here after selling their little cardboard box of a house for a lot of money then bought a 5,000 sq/ft house here for a faction of what they got for selling their little box

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I think my daughter said the state does it charge income tax. If true, that may offset the property tax a bit. Kansas is a high tax state- everything is taxed!

We are retired so the income tax is not an issue!! I filed an objection with the tax office…they were very nice…ALL of our buildings - barns, shop, home were new and I had receipts…they did reduce the taxes by almost $2,000!!! Our taxes in Ok. for 90 acres 2 stables, big hay barn, big shop, 6 large run-in sheds and a ā€œHistoricalā€ 2100 sf house were $715.00 a year!!! But the weather, rocky/clay ground and tornado threat didn’t offset the bargain taxes!!

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Look up Sarah and Chris Dawson at Perrin TX, which is NW of Ft Worth towards Wichita Falls. Sarah used to event, and now they cow horse, and are pretty amazing. https://www.dawsonperformancehorses.com/

Those look like very nice people to work with.

If not with them, they may know of someone else reputable that is taking on clients.

I am from Miles City, went to college in Helena and have lived around Fort Worth since 2002. Personally, I wouldn’t live anywhere else in Texas other than FW. I grew up in a cattle ranching family. Showed Quarter Horses in all around and reiners through high school and a bit during college.

I adore Fort Worth. The culture and community is similar to that of Montana. There are tons of events at the Will Rogers that bring lots of Montanans to town, so I often get to see people I showed with as a kid. I now show hunters and fox hunt and live 24 miles northwest of FW on about 10 acres.

Texas doesn’t have an income tax, and property taxes in certain areas are nowhere near as bad as those around Bozeman! You can live in any major city in Texas and have ample opportunity to find good jobs, reasonably priced land, horse events and horse people. In any city, the closer you are to town, the more expensive land will be. But you can also network and usually find reasonable boarding situations. I travel around the state a lot for work, visiting my husband’s family and going to horse shows so I have a fairly realistic perspective on the pros and cons of most of the metropolitan areas as it relates to employment and horsing.

Feel free to PM me and I’ll give you my email address if you want to chat more. I love living in TX and all it has to offer. Summers can be hot, but winters in Montana aren’t exactly wonderful! Keep in mind that the further north you are in Texas, the more moderate is the climate.

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Californians loving it to death.

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So, if you move to Texas, how do you find out about flood dangers? Is there a public alert system? Maps that show where flooding happens? That just sounds terrifying and dangerous, and I’m wondering how people handle it.

the danger areas are primarily the Hill Country area, west of Austin and southward

I would love to know where in Aubrey you can get land for $250k. Maybe a small acreage of non-developed?

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Also to considering is soil type, especially here in the Dallas area. If you want to do any riding without an indoor, you need to look for sandy loam versus black gumbo. HUGE, huge difference.

:lol::lol::lol:

Well, I was going to just put $500K+ but then I assumed someone would probably chime in and be like ā€œNO MY MOMMA BOUGHT A PLACE FOR 100K AND SOME CHICKENS AND YOU’RE WRONG!ā€ So, I put a range to account for any crazy outliers or house guests.

But, yeah. I had a budget of $325K in 2016 and the closest I could get was the place I’m in now, which is west of I-35 between Denton and Decatur. Everything has been climbing since then. In the ads I see - a decent home with fencing and land in Aubrey is at least half a million dollars and climbing.

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west of I-35 between Denton and Decatur
.

Amazon owns a huge piece of ground on the north side of US380 west of Denton

YES! I’m 40 miles east of Dallas and our ā€œblack gumboā€ clay is awful. 1 day of moderate rain soaks my pastures for 3-4 days, then we get 24 hours of perfection before it fully dries back to concrete-hard. Bermuda grows beautifully in it, at least. As far as property taxes, with just my Homestead Exemption (no Ag Exemption,) I pay $3,800/year on 6 acres with a 2000sq ft home and 1800sq ft barn - and that provides us with moderately-crappy schools and really-crappy roads.

I do agree that Fort Worth & Weatherford are going to be your best bet for cow horses.