This is mostly accurate from what I've seen, but if you were willing to go as far out from the Austin city center as Houston's natural sprawl goes, you would probably get comparable home prices.

This is a very good point that often gets overlooked. Empty lots in desirable inner loop Houston neighborhoods cost $1M. That's not really any different from Austin.

Every large city has a desirable neighborhood with million dollar lots. But if you look at # of houses within 15 minutes of downtown that cost less than 200k. Houston is one of few that's still affordable.

This is a fun off the cuff guess but if you look at a Zillow it's not true. Houses the same distance from the center of town are significantly more expensive in Austin. Everyone I know who moved from Houston to Austin moved twice as far from downtown and paid twice as much to do it.

Interesting! I stand corrected

If you pick Zillow and look at houses under 200k you see a huge difference comparing Houston and Austin.

The issue is that living is actually a combination of housing + transportation. Looked through that lens, the large sprawl of Houston is less affordable.

The average cost of owning a car in the US is $10,728, according to AAA. It’s not easy at all to be car free in most of America. https://www.nerdwallet.com/article/loans/auto-loans/total-co...

Poorer folks are probably not looking at average car ownership costs. They're probably going to buy cheap/crappy cars, which means it's probably reasonable to live in Houston. Of course, then there's the reality that a cheap car is much more likely to need significant repair, which could either cripple a poor person in constant need of the car, or bankrupt the person, and fuel is generally more expensive as efficiency is lower.

Houston‘s sprawl pushes up transportation costs so poor people might have a cheaper car but they are paying more in gas and maintenance. And of course average people care about affordability not just the poor.

But does the low housing cost make up for the transportation cost?

I think the parent commenter did everyone a massive disservice by breaking housing and transportation into two separate categories since they're fungible with each other the same way time and money are.

Housing and commuting costs play off each other.

Working 3 jobs requires limiting transportation time to have enough remianing time to work multiple jobs. This makes Houston disruptively unaffordable for the working poor in a way that’s less obvious if you look at them combined.

It also makes maintenance time for their cars that much more difficult to schedule around.

> Poorer folks are probably not looking at average car ownership costs

That’s part of a vicious cycle down. Rent or mortgage checks are visible so people minimize that and then accept a long commute. People who buy cars based on the monthly payment often pay high interest. A farther commute means hundred of hours a year sitting in bumper to bumper traffic. A drive that’s half an hour on the weekend can inflate to an hour during rush hour. Way too many people consider housing+transportation as separate budget categories.

Also, a farther commute means higher consumption of whatever fuel you’re using, which also hits the pocketbook.