Moving From California to Austin: The Real Tax Math, and What Your Equity Actually Buys

I get some version of this call almost every week now. Somebody is selling in the Bay Area or down in Los Angeles, they have read that Texas has no state income tax, and they want to know what the move actually costs them once all the pieces land.

So let me shoot you straight, because there is more upside here than the headline suggests, and there is one piece of the math worth understanding before you make an offer.

I was born and raised right here in Westlake. My dad was an architect who built our first house on Jousting Lane back in 1974, and I have been selling homes on this side of Austin since 1997. I have walked a lot of California families through this exact move. Here is what I tell them.

The part everybody talks about

Texas does not have a state personal income tax. That part is true, and it is not small.

California's top marginal income tax rate is 13.3 percent, the highest in the country. If your household is anywhere near the upper brackets, that is a real number coming off your annual math the day you become a Texas resident. For a lot of my clients, that single line item is what starts the conversation.

Texas makes up the difference elsewhere, mostly through property tax and sales tax. State sales tax runs 6.25 percent with local add-ons up to a combined 8.25 percent. But the income tax piece is genuine, and if somebody tells you otherwise they are arguing with the tax code.

The part worth planning for

There is one piece of this that catches people by surprise, and it is a lot easier to handle when you see it coming.

In California, your property tax basis freezes. In Texas, it resets.

Under Proposition 13, your assessed value is set at market when you buy, and after that it can only climb 2 percent a year, with the tax itself limited to 1 percent of assessed value plus voter-approved additions. Live in a house fifteen years and your assessed value drifts way below what the place is actually worth. That is why so many California families are paying tax on a number that has almost nothing to do with today's market.

Texas does not work that way.

We have a homestead cap too, and it limits appraised value increases to 10 percent a year. But read this part carefully, because it is the piece that surprises people. The Texas Comptroller puts it plainly: the limitation "takes effect on Jan. 1 of the tax year following the year the property owner qualifies for the homestead exemption."

The year following. Which means the cap does not protect you your first year here.

So if you are looking at a listing and the seller has owned it a long while, the tax figure you see on that listing sheet may be built on their capped value, not yours. Yours resets closer to what you actually paid. I have watched buyers underwrite off the seller's old number and get a bill that lands very differently than they planned.

So here is how I handle it. When we run numbers on a house, I underwrite your carrying cost off a conservative estimate of your post-purchase taxable value, not off the seller's old bill. You get a real number to plan around before you ever write an offer, and nothing about your first tax bill comes as a surprise.

What the rates actually look like

Your total bill depends on your exact address, because you are paying several overlapping entities and they vary block to block. But two of the biggest pieces are easy to name.

For a home in Westlake inside Eanes ISD:

Then you add your city, Austin Community College, the healthcare district, and depending where you land, an emergency services district or a MUD. So the two lines above are a floor, not your bill.

On the relief side, Texas school districts must provide a $140,000 homestead exemption on your residence, which comes off your taxable value for the school portion. That is the single biggest exemption most homeowners get, and you apply for it after the home becomes your principal residence.

A few things worth asking for before you make an offer, and I ask for these on every deal:

• The prior year's actual tax bill, plus the full list of taxing entities
• The current appraised value, not just the seller's taxable value
• Whether the property sits inside city limits, in the ETJ, or carries a MUD or PID assessment
• Whether the exemptions showing on the bill belong to the seller rather than to you

You also have the right to protest your appraisal every year, and plenty of my clients do. In Travis County the deadline is generally May 15 or thirty days after your appraisal notice goes out, whichever is later.

Now the question I actually get asked most

"Cord, what does my equity buy me over there?"

I am going to give you real numbers rather than a pitch, because numbers are something you can actually plan around.

Austin is not the bargain it was ten years ago, and the neighborhoods most of my California clients want are priced like the best neighborhoods anywhere. But the trade still works, and it works for reasons that never show up on a listing sheet. Let me show you the actual math.

Here is where things actually sit. These are median sale prices per square foot. The California numbers cover the three months ending June 2026. The Austin neighborhood numbers are the most recent months available, and I will tell you up front that they bounce around, because we do not close many houses in a given month in Westlake or Tarrytown and two or three big sales can swing a median.

Read that table and here is what it tells you.

If you are selling in San Francisco or San Jose, your dollar genuinely stretches here, and it stretches even in our best neighborhoods. That one is real and I am not dressing it up.

If you are comparing against the Los Angeles city median, Westlake looks closer to a wash. But be careful with that comparison, because that median takes in all of Los Angeles. If you are selling in the Palisades, or Brentwood, or Manhattan Beach, your per-foot number sits well north of the city median, and Westlake is going to look like a bargain next to it. Compare your actual neighborhood, not the city average, and the picture usually improves.

One more thing worth knowing. Austin as a whole runs around $312 a foot. Westlake and Tarrytown sit well above that because they are our best addresses. If you are open on location, your dollar goes a very long way in parts of town I would be glad to show you.

Then why do my California clients still feel like they came out ahead?

Because square footage is not the whole trade, and for a family it usually is not even the main one.

You get more land. The per-foot numbers above are for the house. They do not capture the lot. A lot of my clients go from a tight lot line in California to an acre with oaks on it, and the price per foot never tells that part of the story.

You get Eanes without a tuition bill. This is the one that moves the needle most for families, and it rarely shows up in anybody's cost comparison. Eanes ISD schools are the best in Texas and among the best in the country, and they are public. A lot of the California families I work with were writing private school checks every year for two or three kids. Those checks stop. Run that against your property tax difference before you decide Texas costs more.

Your annual math changes shape. Higher property tax, no state income tax. For most of the California families I work with, and especially for anyone earning well, Texas comes out ahead and often by a wide margin. Run it with your CPA before you commit, and I will happily give them the real property tax numbers to work from.

A worked example, so this is not all abstract

Say you sell in San Francisco for $2.5 million.

At roughly $1,090 a foot, that was about 2,300 square feet.

Bring that same $2.5 million to Westlake at roughly $650 a foot and you are looking at somewhere in the range of 3,800 square feet, on a lot that is probably several times the size of what you left, zoned to Eanes. From San Jose at roughly $821 a foot, the same trade takes you from about 3,000 square feet to that same 3,800. Either way you are buying meaningfully more house and considerably more land.

On property tax, that $2.5 million house in Westlake would run about $30,200 a year on the Eanes and Travis County portions alone, before your city and the other entities, and before your homestead exemption comes off. In California a $2.5 million purchase starts around $25,000 under the 1 percent base rate, plus whatever local additions ride along.

So yes, the property tax line goes up. Now stack up the other side. You are in roughly 1,500 more square feet on a lot several times the size of what you left. Your state income tax went to zero, and for a lot of my clients that is the biggest number on the page. If you had kids in private school, those checks stop, because Eanes is public and it is as good as anything you were paying for.

Add it up and most of the Bay Area families I work with come out ahead, with more house, more land, and more room to breathe. That is the trade, and it is a good one.

How I work with people making this move

I am a bit of an old dog about this. If you hire ME, you work with ME. I answer my own phone, I walk the houses with you, and I write the contracts. Monica backs me up on the details, but you are not getting handed off to somebody you have not met.

Half of my California clients buy before they ever move here, and that works fine. I do video walkthroughs where you are seeing what I am seeing, including the parts a listing photo leaves out, and I will tell you when a house is not right for you. I would rather lose a deal than put a family half way across the country into the wrong street.

If you want the broader picture on the move itself, start with my California to Austin relocation guide, and I have answered the most common questions California buyers ask me in one place.

And if you would rather just talk it through, reach out or call or text me at (512) 751-2673. Tell me what you are selling and roughly what you are looking for, and I will give you a real read on what that buys here and what it costs to hold. No pressure and no script.

Where you grew up matters. So does where your kids are going to. I am happy to help you get that part right.