Federal tax, California state tax (the bill you stop paying), Texas property tax and insurance (the bill you start paying), housing, utilities, auto insurance. Pre-loaded with a $250K married household renting at $2,200/month in central Austin. Change anything; the math updates.
California is loaded as the default. Change income, housing, and origin to see your specific delta.
Sources: Tax Foundation 2024 brackets, IRS 2024 federal brackets, Travis Central Appraisal District 2024 effective rates, Insurance Information Institute, BLS, EIA. Auto insurance and utilities are state averages. Planning tool, not tax advice.
The standard relocation calculator answers, "What is the income tax savings?" That is one of four numbers that decide the move. The other three are: what Austin home price your California rent supports at the actual mortgage rate, which Austin neighborhood is the closest match to where you live now, and what the move week itself costs. This page runs all four against your inputs.
The numbers are sourced. The Texas no-state-income-tax flip is computed against Tax Foundation 2024 California brackets. Travis County effective property tax of 1.81 percent comes from TCAD. Texas average homeowner insurance of $4,456 a year comes from the Insurance Information Institute. Migration counts come from the IRS Statistics of Income county-to-county file for 2022 to 2023.
If you move and buy at the price your current rent breaks even on, your housing line is unchanged. Below this number, the move frees money. Above it, the move costs more than staying put. Mortgage at 6.75 percent 30-year fixed, 20 percent down, Travis County effective property tax at 1.81 percent, Texas average homeowner insurance.
Rent or mortgage P&I plus property tax plus insurance. Use the all-in number.
30-year fixed. Default reflects the Freddie Mac 2026 average.
Conventional default. Lower this if you are using a different loan type.
Your break-even Austin home price
$455,000
At $3,500/month all-in, you can buy up to this price in Austin without paying more than your current housing line.
Method: Solve home price P such that monthly P&I (30-year fixed at the entered rate, after the entered down payment) plus monthly property tax (P × 1.81% / 12) plus monthly insurance ($4,456 / 12) equals the monthly housing budget. The 1.81 percent effective rate is the Travis County average from TCAD 2024; insurance is the Insurance Information Institute Texas state average. HOA, repairs, and the homestead exemption are not modeled.
Twenty-five California origin neighborhoods, hand-curated against seven Austin destination neighborhoods on density, walkability, median home value, household income, age skew, and built form. Not a real-estate listing. A first-pass narrowing of where to spend the rental year.
Method: Each origin is scored against seven Austin neighborhoods on six dimensions (density, walkability per Walk Score 2024, median home value per Zillow ZHVI 2026, median household income per Census ACS 2023, dominant age cohort, dominant built form). Scores are 0 to 100; the top three are surfaced. This is a narrowing tool. The actual fit depends on commute, schools, and which lake or springs you want to bike to.
East Austin (78702) is the most-matched Austin neighborhood for transplants from the Mission, Echo Park, and North Park. Walkability is real for about thirty blocks; the bike lanes are usable. Property tax is the largest line on the year-two ledger.
The categories California-to-Austin transplants miss in their first budget. Toggle the lines that apply; the total updates. Numbers are the high end of the working range for a 2-bedroom California household moving in the May to August peak season.
Sources: Cross-country mover pricing from HireAHelper May 2026 California-to-Austin route quotes; Texas Department of Public Safety fee schedule; Travis County tax assessor; Austin Energy and Texas Gas Service deposit schedules; Zumper Austin May 2026 1BR median.
Compiled from r/Austin threads from 2025 and 2026, three first-year transplant journals (Twitter and Substack), and the line items that recur in the relocation FAQs at Austin tax attorneys' practice pages.
Travis County reassesses every April. Year-one appraisal is often based on the title-company sale price; year two reflects market rate. The homestead exemption caps appreciation at 10 percent, but only if you filed by April 30.
A 2,000 sq ft single-family house on a standard Austin Energy plan, set to 74 to 76 degrees. At 70 degrees the bill runs $450 to $550. The cost is real and is not going down. Many transplants do not budget the July-August spike.
Texas homeowner insurance renewed 35 to 55 percent over the last three cycles. Year-two renewal in Central Texas typically runs 15 to 35 percent above the year-one premium, even with no claims. The hail-loss market does not segment.
Mueller and Hyde Park infant centers run 12 to 18 month waitlists. Couples planning a kid in year two should join the lists in year one. Average infant care cost: $1,800 to $2,400 a month.
An allergy to mountain cedar pollen specific to Central Texas. December and January. Most California transplants do not experience this until year two (full sensitization takes one season). Antihistamines and a HEPA filter are the standard remediation.
The dense corridor matters. A November 2025 r/Austin thread titled "Did all the Californians move back?" drew 27 ups for u/geofgtian's read on what changed: "big tech companies are basically all RTO so all the workers that came in during WFH of COVID are forced to go back for their jobs." The early-2020s influx has moderated. The transferees with offers in hand still come; the speculative arrivals have slowed.
For high-income families with school-age kids, the cohort concentrates in West Lake Hills (78746, Eanes ISD) and the central AISD neighborhoods that border it: Rollingwood, Tarrytown, parts of Westover Hills. An October 2025 r/Austin thread on the high-profile Bay Area tech-and-venture transplants pulled 353 ups. The most-cited reply, from u/momish_atx (197 ups), captured the local read on the cohort: "these people don't care one bit about us. They have their own private healthcare, their own private security teams, their own private education for their children." That is the texture at the highest income tier.
Austin is its own city, not a cheaper version of California. A May 2025 r/Austin thread titled "No one hates Austin more than Austinites" drew 602 ups and long replies from longtime residents. The most-upvoted reply, from u/MixSuspicious123 (178 ups): "most native Austinites can't afford to live in their own hometown because people moved here from more expensive markets, jacked up housing prices, and created insane congestion." That is the local read on the move from the people who watched it happen.
One more line worth tracking. A December 2025 r/Austin thread titled "Austin job market bad enough that people are moving out to find work?" pulled 531 ups. The honest 2026 signal for a Bay-to-Austin tech move: come with an offer in writing. The Austin tech market is not absorbing speculative arrivals the way it was in 2021.
Lake Austin and the Westlake homes that anchor the high-AGI California cohort. The 298 San Francisco County returns in the IRS 2022-2023 file averaged $492,000 in AGI and concentrated in West Lake Hills, Rollingwood, and the central AISD neighborhoods that border them.
Bolded first sentence is the short answer. The rest is the honest one.
At a $150,000 California single salary, the state income tax is roughly $9,977 a year. Texas charges zero. Gross savings, $9,977.
At $200,000 single, $14,627. At a $300,000 single salary, $23,927. At a $250,000 married household, $15,304. At $500,000 married, $38,554. The savings are real and they compound. The property tax differential and homeowner insurance differential eat back roughly half of those savings on a comparable home, so the net is meaningfully smaller than the headline.
Roughly $130,000 of Austin home price for every $1,000 of monthly housing budget at a 6.75 percent 30-year fixed.
A California renter paying $3,500 a month breaks even on a $455,000 Austin home. $5,000 a month supports a $650,000 home. The break-even calculator above runs your specific number. Below the break-even price the move frees money. Above it, you are paying more for housing in Austin than you were in California.
Most land in the dense corridor: East Austin (78702), Hyde Park / North Loop (78751), South Lamar / Bouldin (78704), Mueller (78723).
High-income Bay Area movers with school-age kids cluster in Westlake (78746, Eanes ISD). The high-profile tech-and-venture cohort concentrates in West Lake Hills and Rollingwood. The far suburbs (Cedar Park, Round Rock, Pflugerville) skew intra-Texas, not California. Use the neighborhood matcher above to find the closest fit to where you live now.
Most California transplants spend $11,000 to $25,000 in move-week costs.
Cross-country full-service movers run $5,000 to $12,000 for a 2-bedroom. A container service runs $3,000 to $6,000. A DIY 26-foot truck runs $1,500 to $3,500 plus fuel. Add $4,000 to $8,000 for a security deposit, $350 for utility setup, $115 for vehicle inspection and registration, $33 for the driver license switch. The move-week budget calculator above lets you toggle the lines that apply to your situation.
Five line items recur: April appraisal jump, August electric bill, year-two insurance renewal, childcare waitlists, cedar fever.
The April appraisal arrives higher than the title-company estimate (Travis County reassesses each year, and the homestead exemption caps appreciation at 10 percent only if you filed by April 30). August electric on a 2,000 sq ft house runs $280 to $420. Insurance renewals run 15 to 35 percent higher than year one. Mueller and Hyde Park childcare waitlists run 12 to 18 months. Cedar fever is genuinely worse than most California transplants expect.
California effective property tax averages 0.71 percent of value, capped by Proposition 13. Travis County effective property tax runs 1.81 percent of appraised value (1.9 to 2.1 percent on raw rate, 1.81 percent effective after homestead). On a $1.4 million Bay Area home, the California bill is roughly $9,940 a year. On a $700,000 central Austin home of comparable square footage, the Travis County bill is roughly $12,670 a year. The property tax delta is the single biggest line item that eats the income tax savings.
No. Austin in 2026 is its own city, denser than the 2018 version and more expensive than the brochures imply. A 1-bedroom in the dense corridor runs $1,500 to $1,700 a month plus mandatory fees, comparable to many neighborhoods of San Francisco for a smaller social density and a smaller talent pool. The cost-of-living advantage Austin had in 2018 has compressed sharply. The tax math, the housing square footage, and the weekday outdoor access are still better than the Bay. The cultural depth, the food, and the airport connectivity are not.
4,617 California tax returns moved to Travis County in the IRS 2022 to 2023 migration year (6,919 people, $830 million in adjusted gross income). California is the largest single non-Texas origin state. Top counties: LA (1,135), Santa Clara (644), San Diego (530), Orange (432), Alameda (361), San Francisco (298). The cohort averages $179,755 per return, the highest AGI of any state.