Almost all of that is due to illegal immigration and legal immigration. Call me a racist, but hurricane Katrina dumped a lot of poor blacks from New Orleans into Houston and they never left. Texas has to stop the border jumping or they will be in a lot of trouble. It will bankrupt their state. This is a serious issue. Look at what they are doing to CA and AZ. The affluent parts of Houston, Dallas and Austin have some of the best schools in the country, no crime and a very high standard of living. But the poor areas are horrible. I honestly don't know what the solution is. You can't really throw them out. And more are jumping the border everyday. The war on drugs on the border is not helping either. I hate to say this but the state is moving left really fast. Houston is already liberal and Austin is more liberal then San Francisco. The entitlements are coming. Somebody over there definitely was asleep at the wheel to let this happen.
It's nice not to have fill out a state income tax every year, but...dammmmmn, that property tax bill is a killer.
Yeah but how much is your house worth? Now pick up your home and drop it in southern cali. Now how much is it worth? You follow?
You may be right. I haven't seen the hard numbers on illegals in Texas. Most of the guys on my sub crews (roofing) are from Mexico and it surprises me how many of those guys have their paper work. In Texas and all the workers work under the sub contractor and the general contractor doesn't have to keep up with all the paper work crap on who is legal or not. There may be a problem but the system is set up to keep the problem going.
Just curious, how many homes in Texas that are around 2500-2700 sq/ft in size cost 800k - 1M and yearly property taxes run just shy of 20k/yr?
Texas isn't perfect. but it is far better than 90% of the states in this country for starting a business, tax situations overall. Yes, property tax can be high, I'm at almost 3. and i live in a Loft downtown San Antonio. But for my income, no state tax, I run all write offs through the LLC and pay myself out very little. Most of the equity is kept in my LLC. Construction is a bitch. A good friend of mine has 3 government project in San Antonio and one city project, the Air Port. His biggest problem is finding quality workers. He moved a division of his Company to Texas from Detroit. He said that the workers in Texas are Shit. But it is worth finding the few good ones, paying them well because over all profits are 4x that of Detroit.
Emil, in the pathetic condition you are in, I'm surprised you were even allowed into an LA beach city. Or, was this in the 50s?
income tax and property tax is really bad taxes,,it takes money from people's pocket books. there was a tim when food was no taxed. and the gov't not collecting sales tax..Texas lost $300 million in lost sales tax from amazon. Sales tax excise, luxury tax is the best tax. don't want to pay the sales tax or excise tax gambling tax don't consume. income tax and property tax tax the poor the hardest. the state gov't makes billions in state lottery tax and gambling tax.
2500-2700 sq/ft in size cost 800k ------------------------------------------- 800k you can get twice the size in sq foot.