Originally from the Southern California city of Norwalk, Reece, 40, told GOBankingRates that her journey to Texas kicked off in 2015 via online dating, when she met her partner, who was living in Texas but going to and from California for work at the time.
“He was basically working for a company, and they were bought out by a company in California,” Reece said. “So he was traveling there a lot.”
The couple were long-distance for a few years. In 2018, the two decided that Reece would move to Texas .
Once she was in Texas, Reece said she “felt richer.” She noticed the contrast in the cost of living between the two states, explaining that she took photos of the lower price of gas and sent them to people back home. Two other benefits were cheaper groceries and no state income tax.
“For anyone coming from a state that has a state income tax, that’s a huge difference in your income weekly and monthly,” she said.
In June 2019, she purchased a home in McKinney.
“When I decided to leave California, one of the reasons was because I wanted to buy a home and it didn’t feel attainable in California at that time,” Reece said. “Even to me, five or six years ago, it didn’t feel attainable on my single income as a single parent, and so moving was always in my purview; I just wasn’t sure where. But when I came here, it was immediately a huge relief.”
The move also brought with it an eventual career change for Reece. She explained that she’d worked in human resources for two decades and was working from home for roughly the last five years of her career in that field. When she was laid off from her company in 2023, she left the field.
“I decided to pivot into real estate,” she said. “That transition has been a rollercoaster. It’s been a learning curve, but it’s been super, super rewarding and enjoyable.”
For Reece, the move to Texas has also had downsides. For one, there’s “missing familiarity and home.” Then there’s the weather.
“Everybody knows it gets hot here, but we really get some extreme weather, and I don’t think it’s talked about enough,” Reece said. “And when you’re relocating, it’s pretty alarming.”
Another negative aspect of moving to Texas for Reece? The highways and tolls.
“Especially here in North Texas, that’s different — we don’t have a lot of tolls in California,” Reece said. “So to have tolls on a lot of the roads and to have to drive is a huge cost. You know, some of those savings I was talking about get offset, right, by some of the other things here in the state of Texas.”
But Reece emphasized that she does “really love most things about Texas.” For her, the move has been “worth it.”
“I do think that I’ve been able to thrive here in a way that I just felt like I couldn’t in Southern California, like I said, on the income that I had,” Reece said, adding that her income “still isn’t matching the pace of inflation, especially now.”
Advice for People Wanting To Make the Move
Reece noted that she feels lucky that she moved to Texas when she did — “at a good time and right before all the madness of COVID.” She was able to refinance her home in January 2020, before the pandemic, and “got a great rate.”
For anyone wanting to move to Texas from California or another state, Reece advised to “do it sooner rather than later, because everybody’s doing it.”
“Large companies are moving here, so they’re relocated their employees,” Reece said. “And so it’s developing really quickly; lots of houses are going up, but that means the prices are going up as well.”
For instance, according to the Q1 2024 Texas Quarterly Housing Report published by Texas REALTORS, the median price of a single-family home was 1.6% higher that quarter than the same quarter in 2023.
Reece stressed for people who want to move to take steps to do so now, because the future isn’t guaranteed, and a “dollar today is not worth as much as it is tomorrow.”
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