School me on homes in DFW with possible boat docks

So my daughter lives in Lewisville at the edge of Flower Mound and Highland Village in the Flower Mound school district. She is getting serious with her boyfriend, whom my wife and I both like, and we actually spent this past weekend with them and his parents and all got along fantastically. So that part is very cool.

Mama figures they may start cranking out rug rats in the next few years and wants to be prepared to possibly move out there, so she can be by the grandkids. I'm only 56, so I figure I have a good 10-15 more years of working, so this throws a small hitch in my giddyap.

So is there anywhere within 30 minutes - 1.5 hours of DFW that I can have a boat dock without breaking the bank? Nice stuff we looked at in The Tribute, without a boat dock, but with a lake view was over a million. I can buy in Florida on the Gulf with a huge boat dock for less than that, plus the property taxes in Florida are much less versus Texas.

I've never been a boat guy, but my wife has wanted one for years. We never considered it because we were already breaking the bank with racing for my son, and dance competition for my daughter. Now, we think it would be fun to have for when the grandkids come over.

The other option is buy a regular house, that is somewhat close to a lake, and then rent a slip and have a ski boat or a pontoon boat you can ski behind docked at the lake? A coupe of wave runners too would be nice. I own a truck and know how to pull a trailer, but it just seems like having this stuff, in the water ready to go, would be much more fun?

 

Or buy a house boat and have 20-25 ski boat and a wave runner or two

 

So much better not having to trailer your shit to the boat launch.....especially after a long work day.

Living on an island does have its perks

 

WTF what about our racing plans? I was all onboard to sponsor you, Linders.

 

Don't know anything about living on a house boat, but not thinking I would like that smallness? Heck I still own the first house I ever bought and it is in Flower Mound 10 minutes from where my daughter bought her house. It is too old/small for Mama at 1500 sq ft. We have become used to living the past 26 years in 3K square feet with a 4 car garage.

 

Well shoot, that changes everything, I'm staying in California.

Are you putting me on a 4 cylinder 500cc two stroke, or a Ninja 400?

 

Plenty of lakes in DFW where you can have just a slip without buying expensive water front property, which is most common. Also, you can get not-quite-lake-front property where you can take a couple minute ride in a golf cart, bicycle, or even walk to your slip; still convenient and much cheaper than literally on the water.

Lake Lewisville, Grapevine, Lavon, Ray Roberts, Ray Hubbard, Eagle Mountain are all literally right there, and there are plenty of others if you don't mind/want to be in a more rural setting. Lake Texoma is nice and very large so there are plenty of places on it, that's about the limit of your 1.5hr range. DFW is a pretty nice place to be overall, I grew up there and am happy to provide my 20 years out of date perspective.

Most important of all, is that you have MSR Cresson just south of Ft Worth, Eagles Canyon Raceway (best track in TX, for real) just north of FtW in Decatur, and a nice kart track in Denton. Then you are a half day's drive from Hallet in OK, COTA, Harris Hill in San Marcos (just south of Austin), MSR-H in Houston, and 3 kart tracks (2 in one complex) in Houston. And a 10hr drive to Barber and 11hr to NCM, and a little more to Road Atlanta. And you can hit the TX Hill Country and Ozarks easily if you street ride.

ETA: At Lake Texoma you can be on the OK side where the tax situation is different if that would benefit you. I haven't looked at those numbers in years, but I think it is roughly that OK has lower property and sales tax, but has a state income tax that Texas doesn't. So that might be a smart thing depending on your financial situation.

 

Maybe out around Rockwall? That is on the east side and would be close to your max time from DFW. It isn’t a bad drive from Love. And there is an In & Out so you won’t go hungry.

 

I don't even know how many times I've eaten at that In n Out in Rockwall. Every time I drove back to Little Rock from Dallas for at least the last few years we would stop there for lunch before settling in for the slog up I30.

 

I haven’t ridden there in forever, did they fix the braking areas and change the layout? I saw the “what could’ve been” pics from when they first cut it in and that was very different from what got paved. I remember some good sections but it was mainly a braking and acceleration contest with FUBAR’ed braking zones.

Full disclosure, my memory may be a bit tainted...I broke a bike in half at the end of the back straight.

 

That price point, that much house, that close to DFW, with a boat dock on property = not much lake.

Here's you a spot. We'd be neighbors (ish) It's about 4 miles from me. Recently sold for mid-600k.

 

i’m eating a quick subway and heading back to work. will look at that, because that is within budget, but on the high end because of ridiculous texas property taxes.

 

It's kind of funny to hear you talk about the Texas property taxes when you currently live in California.

Even with Texas property taxes taken into consideration, one would think living in Texas would save you a shit ton of money versus where you are.

 

If this is an imminent move, one of my customers is about to list his home in The Colony, a short walk from Stewart Creek Park. No dock on premises, but there's room to park a decent sized boat in the driveway, and there's a ramp to Lewisville Lake about 1 mile from said driveway. I went inside once briefly to do a wellness check on the dog, it was nice inside, though I didn't get nosey.

Zillow estimate says 523K. View from the backyard:

 

You would think so, wouldn't you, but that is not the case.

When I lived in Texas I bought my house for 68k in 1987/87 and when refinancing it to pull the equity out to buy a commerical building for work in 2013 it appraised for $135-140k.....so it roughly doubled in 26 years. It has now jumped up to about 300K in in the past 8 years it has increased like California real estate, possibly even more % wise.

The current problem is Texas doesn't limit yearly property increases like California does. Before I ever moved to California, the voters passed Prop 13, which says property taxes can only go up 2% per year, so even if the property goes crazy it will take over 30 years for your taxes to double.....which is similar to how Texas property used to appreciate for the first 26 years I owned that house, and it is similar to the rate of inflation the government uses as an expected or ideal target.

Right now my property taxes on the little dinky house I paid $68k for, are higher than my California house I paid $292K for in 1995 and is currently worth about 1.2-1.3 million. My current taxes in California are only $4400 per year. When I looked at houses in Dallas this past weekend, the rates were 2.42-2.6%, so at 2.6% my 1.2 million house would cost over $31K in taxes in Texas. I don't pay anywhere near 31K in residential property taxes in California, and even with state and fed income tax factored in, I still do not. California has a base tax rate of 1.0 on property and then add-ons for different cities, and school districts like most places do and my neighborhood is around 1.2%.

We went to Wylie which is close to Lake Ray Hubbard and the agent told me the tax rate was 2.6% on the house we looked at....I think it was a 5-600K home. So that is $15,600 per year and when I retire I really don't want to be paying that high of a tax rate.

Texas has always gotten along fine, and had enough tax revenue, even in the old days when property in Texas were very reasonable, compared to other parts of the US. I wouldn't be surprised if Texas has some kind of uprising like California did, because this huge tax increase is a recent phenomenon in Texas. It will surely start pricing some people out of there homes that live on fixed incomes if nothing changes.

It sort of makes we wish my daughter had moved somewhere else after college and I'm the one that told her to stay in Texas because she could afford to buy a nice house out there and could not in California. I have a friend that bought a 3-400k house in Tennessee a couple years ago, and I maybe off my a little bit, but I believe he told me his taxes are between $1-2K. I think Tennessee only taxes you on 25% of your value, or something like that....maybe someone can chime in on that.

If it will cost me as much or more to live in Texas vs. beautiful California, even though I personally like the politics better in Texas, I would rather figure out a way to give my daughter a chunk of money and have her move back to California. One problem with that is his parents are wanting to move out of Illinois down to Texas too, and in their minds, they really couldn't afford to live in California.

 

My thoughts are we may buy reasonably soon, but would probably rent it out until/if we move there? The stupid part of that is if this bubble bursts we could loose some equity. The flip side, is if the bubble bursts because interest rates shoot up, the payment will likely be similar.

I heard from my daughter the colony doesn't have a great reputation, but we looked at The Tribute, which is in The Colony and that place was really nice.

How big is that place? Single level or double? Size of garage? You can PM me the address, if you like and I will look it up on zillow.

 

That's a bit further out than we have looked at so far, but it could work. One problem is that doesn't look like a lake I can go cruise around on and water ski. That looks like something small, which would only support electric boats? If I see the map correctly it doesn't connect to Lavon Lake, which I heard is a nice lake.

We were going to look at Rockwall, and may still, but I've heard the traffic on that bridge is a nightmare and there is only one way in or out, and sometimes you get stuck for 1-3 hours on he bridge. I've lived in California for over 30 years and have never been stuck that long on my commute. There are so many freeways out here, there is always a reroute you can take.

 

I almost put in parentheses that this wasn't in *that* part of The Colony.

It is definitely a multifaceted burgh.

PM on the way.

 

Rockwall had too much growth too fast and not enough tax base before the growth to fund the infrastructure to support such growth. Now that the growth has happened, it would be extraordinarily inconvenient to shut down traffic to build sufficient infrastructure.

Substitute Forney, Heath, Lucas, Wylie, Princeton, and a few dozen other sub and ex urbs of DFW in the same dilemma.

BeerSARS and the subsequent work from home trend has helped with traffic, but it's about to get worse again with the 'Lets move out to the urbs since we don't have to commute anymore' craze.

 

I don’t remember where you are but i seem to remember you saying you were in Colin county and the taxes are much lower there? looking on my phone with google maps I can’t see county outlines, i’m sure there could be a setting for it, but not able to find it.

Not sure i want to pay 500k + for a house and when people ask where I live I have to explain I’m in the small good area.

My first house in california was in midway city, the small 2 block area that was less bad, but i still called it midway shitty. Bought it for 175k in 93 put 20k in it and sold it in 96 for 150k and I carried the paper because the economy was bad in s cal at the time. It’s now shown on zillow for $779k.