If you could choose where to live

U

Uninformed

5,000+ Posts
Tucson/Oro Valley, Lakeway, Monterey

Tucson: Good mountain biking and outdoors. Close to San Diego and Bay of California. Mid price houses $500K for same house in Lakeway that is $400K. Need to drive to get to most places. Good weather

Lakeway: Cheap housing $400K for house that is $800K in Monterey, good road biking, good boating, need to drive everywhere, great schools, decent weather

Monterey/Pacific Grove/Carmel: Expensive housing, can walk everywhere for dinner, etc., little traffic, good biking, good weather, avg. schools, high taxes



Which would you choose and why?
 
Tucson- not enough culture for me, Mexico access was nice- 15 years ago- today, not so much. Too isolated from anything other than Phoenix. Tucson people have a Phoenix complex- much like Arizona has a California one- much like aggies have a Longhorn issue.

Lakeway- if you have no kids in school- very nice retirement option. Peaceful, cost efficient, close to Austin, A+ for activities. But- I would vote no if you have kids in school.

Monterey- more culture, more beauty- also an A+ for activities- but the down side is the costs. Ok for schools- as you noted.

Long story short- if you are ok with the costs- I would vote Monterey first, Lakeway second, Tucson last.
 
Monterey.. For 5 months, from May to September i would find the heat unpleasant in either Tucson or Lakeway.

Monterey - the ocean, golf, Lake Tahoe (skiing/gambling) is a five hour drive away.

Also, i would find Lakeway and more than likely Tucson too suburban, too sterile, too anyplace USA for my tastes.
 
I mirror a lot of the same thoughts on here.

Tucson/Oro Valley is nice, but I would put it a pretty distant third to the other two. You will likely end up flying out of Phoenix to go a lot of places, so that's an hour+ drive up North and that drive SUCKS. The interstate is ****** and narrow and full of trucks. Oro Valley is probably 40 minutes (maybe more) from the crappy Tucson airport as well, so you're far from both. The weather isn't bad and I prefer it to Austin, but I just can't imagine making the choice to go here if the other two were an option.

Lakeway - Effectively you're in Austin, considering your other options. Lakeway gives you the convenience of the smaller town feel and enough retail/restaurants to get you through most days, and you're close enough to Austin to go in for dinner without worrying about it too much. It's not much different from Oro Valley to Tucson as far as drive-time goes, and Austin trumps Tucson in most aspects.

Monterey/Carmel - This place is paradise to many, if you can afford it. If you like heat, you'll probably find yourself "cold" here quite a bit, but if you like the cooler weather then this is ideal. You'll be a little further out of touch with airports than your other options and you really have to like that small area because you won't want to drive too far (traffic, gas prices), but there's a lot to love about that small area as well.

It really depends on what your top priorities are. I wouldn't spend more to live in Tucson than Lakeway, that's for sure. If you pick Cali you'll pay for it in a lot of ways, but for many people it's worth it. I just moved back to Austin from Orange County, and the OC Register summed up the area pretty well for me recently with an article quote that said "for many, the juice isn't worth the squeeze". That's a feeling many Californians have had and why we see so many moving to Austin, but if you like the juice enough, the squeeze can be worth it!
 
Johnny,

I agree with most of what you said with your comments sort of mirroring mine. The problem with Monterey as you mentioned is that state income tax is 10% and housing is about double that of Lake Travis. This means that if you are looking to buy a $400K house around Lake Travis you will have to spend $800K in Monterey. I guess you could look at $1 mill foreclosures in Monterey but of course the same thing could be done in Lake Travis. So when you start taking the cost of living into account, you quickly realize that with the amt. you save by living in Austin, you could buy a second home in Colorado or a condo in the Caribbean.

The funny thing is my opinion changes depending on my mood. If my son comes home with school issues, I start thinking Austin is a better option. If I look at houses, I immediately get fed up with California. If the weather sucks outside, I start thinking California is a better option. If traffic is a problem, I start thinking the idea of walking to restaurants in California is a better way to go. If I start thinking that I might want to dabble in VC, California is a better option. Anyway, you get the idea. Seeing other people's opinions definitely helps, though.

BTW, when your dad was at Arizona, where did he buy, Oro Valley or closer to the school? I know the OC was in a large cookie cutter home in Oro Valley.



Keep the comments coming.
 
You ask me this question in January.. when it is 72 and beautiful out in Austin i might give you a different answer.

You ask me that question now, on April 18, waking up to a god awful muggy morning (85% humidity) and now the temp hitting 95, and i ruling Lakeway out.

For me weather probably trumps every other issue, if you take employment and family responsibilities out of the equation.
 
He bought a house in the "Catalina Foothills" area very close to La Paloma. North of town, but not as far NW as Oro Valley. I really liked his house and the area, but you have to like the desert landscape. A lot of people think it's just brown and ugly. The biggest pain in the *** with Tucson is the lack of ANY freeway system other than the interstate, which few people ever use. Now, there's really not much around to need a freeway to get to, but getting from Oro Valley into town in traffic is mind-numbing because you're on city roads the whole time and have to keep stopping at signals. Also, Oro Valley is all the way around the mountain from Mt. Lemmon and the road leading up, so even though it's "close" it'll take you 2 hours - but that's just picking nits really.

I know what you're saying about the decision being tough, and my wife and I just had to go through much of the same in deciding to move back to Austin from the OC. At the end of the day, the only things we could come up with as pros in the CA column were: weather, the beach, and Disneyland...and we never went to the beach even though we were pretty close. We did go to DL a lot though, and that I will miss. But at the end of the day, the price was just far too high considering we are a young family and want our family to grow - and the 1200sf condo for a half-milly just wasn't cutting the mustard!

I couldn't ever argue against moving to Monterey, but you really really REALLY have to want to pay that price - and as you said it's not just real estate. Taxes, gas, food, everything is more there.

On walking to shops/restaurants - it's one other thing I will miss greatly about our OC home. I loved walking to a lot of places (but most of them sucked, so it wasn't all that great).

On dabbling in VC - I don't think Monterey and being a hour+ from the SF/SJ area is necessarily better than being in Austin, but then again I don't know much at all about VC and where to be.
 
Lakeway does not optimize Austin on almost any level, unless you have one of the handful of homes that is actually on the lake (such as a friend of mine does). Or maybe, like one other friend of mine over there, having a fabulous panoramic lake view from every room in the house. Otherwise, it is disjointed, not developed in a very high level way, and too far from Austin to actually be in Austin. Almost no one I know in Lakeway actually uses the lake. The feel is not Austin-ish, but competitive housewife-ish, more like Dallas in that way. (Maybe compared to California, it's all down-homey to you.) There are just lots of better places to live in Austin, that's just what I think.
 
I was in lawschool at Arizona during his time there, which was fun. Two favorite parts of that:

When a law professor took a shot at him one day in class over his "discipline techniques", but I wasn't in class. The next day he apologizes in front of the class and I reply "it's ok, I wasn't here anyway" to great laughter.

When an athletic staffer asked me, before the press conf where they expected him to resign and he didn't, "so i guess you're going to transfer lawschools". i wouldn't have either way (and still finished after his ouster), but thanks, dick.

Anyway, back to Tucson. That center is La Encantada. I had to look it up because it was driving me crazy. Opened up just about 6 months before my then-gf-now-wife and I moved to Austin the first time around. AJ's is the grocery and it's a pretty cool store, and they had some other great restaurants and nice shopping. I really don't have much bad to say about Tucson and we found the food there to be quite good.

We've only been back in Austin for 6 weeks, so catch me mid-way through the summer. We are really happy with the decision so far, and having 2.5x the space and a big yard for a much lower payment hasn't gotten old yet. We want to have more kids and that was a non-starter in our old home, so it made the decision easier for us.
 
Tarrytown, Pemberton, Brykerwoods

but i also understand why people would like Lakeway. It just wouldn't be for me. There is no right or wrong on any of this, just preferences.
 
I am pretty fond of western NC. I am located between Boone and Asheville. The summers are mild, the winters can be a pain, but even with 2 feet of snow the roads get cleared pretty quick. You will never run out of things to do outdoors, from snow skiing to river rafting, trout fishing, hiking, driving down the Blue Ridge parkway etc.

Now if they would just cut the taxes in this state and realize that brisket > pork, things would be perfect.
 
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