10 Things Texans Won’t Admit About Living in Texas

Ask a Texan about Texas, and you’ll get a speech.

Bigger, better, friendlier, freer.

But catch that same Texan in August, sweating through a shirt in a parking lot, and a few honest thoughts start slipping out.

These are the things they’d rather you didn’t repeat.

1. Property Tax Bite

“No state income tax” is the first thing a Texan will tell you, usually before you’ve asked.

The property tax bill only comes up later, if it comes up at all.

Texas carries one of the heaviest property tax loads in the country, with an effective rate around 1.4% on owner-occupied homes, well above the national average.

On a $400,000 house, that’s thousands a year, every year.

The state skips the paycheck and gets you at the mailbox instead.

Every Texan knows a neighbor who protests their appraisal like it’s a second job.

2. Grid Gets Nervous

Texas runs its own power grid, separate from the rest of the country, and Texans are proud of that independence right up until the lights flicker.

Then comes the text from ERCOT asking everyone to bump the thermostat and hold off on the dishwasher.

After the deep freeze of February 2021, nobody in Texas treats a cold snap casually anymore.

People stock water, charge everything, and keep an eye on the forecast the way coastal folks watch a storm cone.

A Texan will swear the grid is fine.

Then they’ll go buy another case of bottled water, just in case.

3. Summer Is a Sentence

Texas’ summer is an endurance event that starts in May and forgets to leave by October.

Stretches of 100-degree days pile up until the pavement shimmers and your steering wheel gets too hot to grab.

Texans plan their days around shade and covered parking.

You leave the house early or you leave it late.

And that “it’s a dry heat” line?

Tell it to anyone in Houston, where the humidity turns a walk to the car into a full outfit change.

4. It’s Too Far to Anywhere

Texans love bragging about the size of the state, then wince when they have to drive across it.

El Paso to Beaumont is a longer trip than El Paso to San Diego.

Amarillo folks are closer to four other state capitals than to Austin.

A “quick trip to see family” can mean eight hours and two tanks of gas without ever crossing a state line.

Texas is so big that El Paso sits in a whole different time zone, on Mountain Time while the rest of the state runs on Central.

Bragging rights, sure. A road trip, less so.

5. Cedar Fever Misery

Outsiders picture Texas allergies as a spring thing.

Texans know the worst of it hits in the dead of winter.

Mountain cedar dumps pollen from December through February, and the reaction, cedar fever, comes with a stuffed head, itchy eyes, and sometimes a low fever that feels like the flu.

Around Austin and the Hill Country, it's brutal.

People blame a cold, then remember it's January and the cedars are at it again.

No Texan advertises cedar season to a prospective transplant.

6. Traffic Caught Up

Texans will tell you they escaped the coasts to get away from gridlock.

Then they sit on I-35 through Austin and don't move for forty minutes.

Houston's freeways sprawl wider than most cities' downtowns, and the commute swallows whole evenings.

The boom that brought all the jobs also brought a lot of brake lights.

A Dallas driver merging onto the High Five interchange has made peace with a certain amount of chaos.

7. Everything Keeps Getting Pricier

The "cheap Texas" reputation is out of date.

Housing costs in Austin and the booming suburbs have climbed hard, and the bargain that lured people a decade ago is thinner now.

Add the property taxes and the summer electric bills, and the math looks different than the brochure promised.

Texans still say it beats the coasts.

They just don't call it cheap out loud anymore.

8. Bugs Run the Place

Fire ants build mounds in the yard overnight and sting anyone who forgets to look down.

Mosquitoes treat a Texas backyard like an all-night buffet.

And then there are the roaches, the big flying kind Texans politely call "water bugs" so they don't have to admit what they saw.

Every Texan has a story about one landing on them.

Nobody tells that story to a visitor thinking about moving down.

9. Weather Whiplash

Texas can serve up 80 degrees and shorts one afternoon, then an ice storm two days later.

Spring brings tornado watches and hail the size of golf balls that dents every car on the street.

The Gulf Coast keeps one eye on hurricane season from June through November.

Texans keep a jacket and a pair of shorts in the same closet, ready for either.

The forecast is a suggestion, not a promise.

10. They'd Never Leave Anyway

Every Texan saves this admission for last.

After the taxes and the heat and the bugs and the ice storms, they wouldn't trade it.

The Friday night lights, the breakfast tacos, the way a stranger at the gas station will chat like you're old friends.

Whataburger at midnight after a game.

The bluebonnets in April that make the whole roadside glow.

Why Texans Stay Anyway

For all the grumbling, the moving trucks keep pointing toward Texas.

The Census Bureau counted 391,243 new Texans in a single year, the biggest gain of any state, pushing the population to 31.7 million.

That's more than a thousand arrivals a day, many of them landing in the suburbs north of Dallas and Houston.

Fort Worth alone added more than 19,000 people, the biggest jump of any city in the country.