Austin: what to see and whether to move there

What Austin runs on and who it suits

Austin has changed shape completely in twenty years, from a university town with music clubs into an industrial and technology hub. Tesla's Giga Texas sits east of the city, Apple has a campus to the north, Samsung is building out chip fabrication in nearby Taylor, and Google, Oracle, IBM and Meta all run substantial engineering offices, with Dell headquartered in Round Rock.

The 2021-2022 boom is over. Layoff waves have hit repeatedly, and Oracle's mass cuts in spring 2026 reached local teams too. The market has split: semiconductors, power and AI infrastructure are short of engineers, while ordinary product engineering is crowded. Even so, the metro still ranks among the fastest job-growth markets in the country, driven by healthcare, advanced manufacturing and energy rather than software alone.

The feel of the place stays young - median age around 34, a huge university, live music seven nights a week, and SXSW in March and ACL in October that briefly double what a room costs. Politically it is a blue island in a red state, and the gap between city rules and Texas law comes up constantly. The people moving in are engineers priced out of California, founders who care about the absent state income tax, and families who want a house with a yard for what a studio costs in San Francisco.

Neighbourhoods: where newcomers land

The core is small. Downtown and Rainey Street mean towers, lake views, the highest rents and the loudest weekends. Seaholm and Second Street are quieter and just as expensive.

South Austin is what people picture: South Congress, Bouldin Creek, Travis Heights, Zilker. Bungalows, coffee, walking distance to Barton Springs, and purchase prices well above the city median.

East Austin - East Cesar Chavez, Holly, Govalle, Chestnut - is where gentrification runs fastest, with the best food and bars, new duplexes mixed into old housing stock. The historic dividing line along I-35 is still legible, and block quality can shift within two streets.

North: Hyde Park and North Loop are older houses near campus; Mueller is a master-planned district on the old airport site that works well for families; Crestview and Allandale are quiet middle class. Northwest is The Domain, a second business core where life happens entirely by car.

The suburbs are their own economy - Round Rock, Cedar Park, Leander, Pflugerville and Georgetown to the north, Buda, Kyle and Dripping Springs to the south. Housing runs roughly a third cheaper, at the cost of 40-70 minutes in traffic.

On safety, plainly: Austin has few genuinely no-go areas. The real issues are car break-ins around nightlife strips and visible street homelessness downtown and under the highway. Be more careful after dark around Rundberg, North Lamar and the far end of East Riverside.

Cost of living

Austin is no longer cheap, but the 2024-2026 rental slump has left it clearly below the coastal metros. The trap is property tax: Texas charges no state income tax, but owners pay roughly 1.5-2 percent of assessed value each year, which on a $600,000 house means $9,000-12,000 annually. Renters pay it indirectly, through the rent.

A two-bedroom in a decent area runs $2,000-2,800. The median house price in the city sits around $550,000-600,000, roughly a quarter to a third less in the suburbs. Lunch out is $15-22, dinner for two with wine $90-140. Treat these as orders of magnitude and check current numbers before you commit.

Practicalities: transport, climate, language, money

Transport. Austin is a car city. CapMetro buses and the Red Line commuter rail exist but cover little; the Project Connect light rail plan has been cut back and keeps slipping, so do not move here counting on it. The I-35 rebuild through downtown will add congestion for years. AUS airport is stretched and expanding, with few direct flights to Europe.

Climate. Humid subtropical: from June to September highs sit above 95F and often near 105F, and that is months, not a heatwave. Winters are mild, but every few years an ice storm exposes how fragile the Texas grid is - keeping water and a backup heat source is common sense, not paranoia. From December to February cedar fever, a local juniper allergy, hits a lot of people hard. The good months are March to May and October to November.

Language. English, with Spanish everywhere; useful, not required.

Internet. Gigabit from Google Fiber, AT&T Fiber or Spectrum covers most areas at roughly $70-100 a month. Mobile plans are expensive by European standards.

Banking. Most full accounts require an SSN or ITIN; a basic account can be opened with a passport, visa and address. Your credit history starts at zero, which means a secured card and larger rental deposits for the first year or two.

Moving and legal status

The US has no digital nomad visa, and living here on a B1/B2 while working for a foreign client is a grey zone rather than a route. The real options:

• H-1B, a lottery that moved in February 2026 to a wage-weighted model where higher Department of Labor wage levels get more entries. The $100,000 supplemental fee introduced in 2025 for new applicants from abroad was struck down by a court in mid-2026 and is not being collected while the appeal runs - check its status at the time you file.
• O-1 for people with an extraordinary record and L-1 for intracompany transfers: no lottery, but a demanding evidence file.
• E-2 for investors from treaty countries; Russia is not one, several post-Soviet states are.
• EB-5, an investment from $800,000 in a targeted employment area that leads straight to a green card, with long timelines and project-specific risk.
• EB-1A and EB-2 NIW self-petitions for people who can argue their work stands on its own without an employer sponsor.
• F-1 study followed by OPT and the STEM extension, still the most common entry route for younger applicants.

On tax: Texas levies no state income tax, but the US taxes the worldwide income of residents and of all its citizens. Country-level detail sits on our United States page, with the general mechanics in residence permits, digital nomad visas and taxes by country. US immigration rules move fast, courts included, so verify against the primary source.

Is Austin worth considering as a base

Austin makes sense if you work in chips, power or AI infrastructure, or hold a remote contract with a US company, and what you value most is space plus no state income tax.

The honest downsides: five months a year outdoors is hard work; the city barely functions without a car; property tax eats much of the income tax saving; healthcare is expensive and Texas never expanded Medicaid, so coverage is entirely on you; the state grid is unreliable; and the cultural layer has thinned out, with the old slogan about keeping the city weird now mostly a marketing line. What survives is real, though - the music, the food, a swimmable lake in the middle of downtown and a genuine engineering labour market. On salary against cost, Austin still beats California.