Apparently when houses here sit empty you get a few spiders and weather related worries.

There you get scorpion infestations and super **** you roaches that congregate around water sources.

It sounds like they have some bad roaches.

http://s3.vidimg02.popscreen.com/ori...ad-roaches.jpg

I moved from CO to TX, and I keep hearing how much cheaper it is... but I'm not really convinced.

For example, take buying a house. The house prices are way lower down here, but the property taxes are way higher. So, for a similar house in both places, the total price would be lower here, but the monthly mortgage + taxes payment is the same. However, once the house is paid off, I'm left with an asset that is worth significantly less, while having paid the same amount. Also, I'm still stuck paying the higher taxes.

Where are you at? The property taxes vary a lot. For example, in the Fort Worth city limits the taxes are probably 30% higher than if you move to the county west of the city.

Houston

Perhaps I underestimated the required recovery time by a decade or two.