Sara’s Weekly Update #11
I couldn’t get time to write my weekly updates for the last three weeks. We were going through a major life changing event, which I will cover in detail in this weeks update.
Personal Update
We moved to Dallas Suburbs in Texas (TX) from Minnesota (MN). It was a big disruption on our routines. Going cover why & how we moved in this weeks letter
Why Texas?
It was fall 2020 (during covid), interest rates were historically low & everyone was buying home as 30 year mortgage rates were ~2.5%. We were living in a townhome and we are running out of space and some of our friends started shopping in MN for a Single family home. We also started looking around MN and try to buy with friends so we can all live close by. Here in US, as a first generation Immigrant, friends are part of the support system. We were living in a city called Maple Grove but we were open to move to other city as long as all friends agree to it. In my I was like erasing the white board & starting to think from scratch. I was asking myself if I have to start fresh in MN which city would I choose? Some of the criteria are
Friends close by in 10-15 min radius
Good school system for kids until high school
Decent Indian community so kids don’t feel left out
All shopping & retail (costco, wholefoods, starbucks, etc) close by to enjoy some of the smaller thing we like.
A home that can suit our family for next 20+ years.
With this we narrowed down to Woodbury & even found a new community, but we all couldn’t find a lot that we liked. The sales person said there will be more lots in spring 2021, so we all said we will come back in spring 2021.
When we give time, our mind wanders :-). My mind is like why restrict myself to MN, erase the mental whiteboard again and start from scratch. I was asking the question if I had all the freedom to pick a place in US, where will I go? Some of the criteria remains the same
Friends close by in 10-15 min radius
Good school system for kids until high school
Decent Indian community so kids don’t feel left out
All shopping & retail (costco, wholefoods, starbucks, etc) close by to enjoy some of the smaller thing we like.
A home that can suit our family for next 20+ years.
warm weather, so more outdoor time for kids to play and relief from my cold induced asthma (I cough every winter & only in the winter).
This is when I am reading that Elon Musk is moving to Austin, Telsa HQ is moved to Austin, Oracle HQ is also moved to Austin & Apple’s $1 Billion campus is opening in Austin. I went to Austin in 2017 for Kubernetes conference (kubecon), and realized Austin is a small tech hub, and with recent developments it’s evident that Austin tech hub is booming.
So we friends decided to take a trip to Austin & Dallas & have a look at it. By the time we took the trip its Feb 2021, and we came to know that the market is so crazy in Texas. We went to ~30-40 community in Austin & Dallas combined, but we could not speak to any sales person, all the model homes were closed and had a notice saying “due to unprecedented demand we are all sold out & please go to our website to join the waitlist”. And particularly Austin became very competitive with bay area folks bidding $200-300k extra from the list price. Soon we realized we cannot buy home together in Texas as its very competitive and long wait lines, so some of the friends decided to buy home in MN. For us we thought if we buy a home in MN, its going to be really hard to move out of MN for atleast 4-5 years and Nila will be in middle then and I hear from friends that it gets harder to move when kids are in middle school. So we thought this is the time we can move while kids are still young.
Why Dallas?
Since we are alone now in this cross state move adventure, we wanted to move to a place where we have friends already there, so it’s easy for us to bootstrap our life. We have our college friends, many of my cognizant friends from NJ, WI & MN are settled in Dallas. Also having a good international airport is big plus for us, we can avoid one leg in the India travel, with 3 young kids it matters to us a lot. Also its relatively affordable in Dallas & less competitive than Austin. And closer to Austin, if I wanted to visit sometime for office or any tech conferences. Also there is no bidding wars in Dallas yet. So we decided to start our search in Dallas.
Why Prosper?
Once we decided Dallas, we know where to live in Dallas without any questions. Its North Dallas suburbs. Frisco came to our mind first, but based on the price we can only afford a smaller size home in Frisco, so we deiced to move up north further and found that in Prosper we can afford little bigger home that can suit us for next 20+ years.
I will continue on this topic for next few weeks, stay tuned!
Lovely update. Looking forward to next weeks.
Super.