Austin vs Fort Worth: which should you move to?
Austin or Fort Worth? Housing, rent, crime, climate, income, taxes and transit, side by side, from each city's own published figures. Written for someone deciding where to live, not for a ranking.
Both cities are in Texas and both were priced at Freddie Mac's 7.03% rate of 24 September 2026, so the rate and the state's rules are shared, and both prices are MLS medians of sales inside the city, though Fort Worth's counts single-family houses only. Mortgage, property tax and insurance come to about $4,041 a month on Austin's $560,000 and $2,516 on Fort Worth's $327,000, roughly 54% of Austin's median household income of $90,430 and 37% of Fort Worth's $82,503. Zillow's index for each city keeps the order, $497,418 for Austin against $295,800 for the City of Fort Worth. Neither levies an income tax and both charge 8.25% sales tax, but on the same $327,000 house Fort Worth's six taxing units charge $5,044 against $4,726 from Austin's five. Crime splits on the same FBI counts: Fort Worth has the lower violent and property rates, 375 and 2,226 per 100,000 against 421 and 3,093, and Austin the lower homicide rate, about 5.1 per 100,000 against 7.6. Fort Worth has just passed Austin in population and is growing faster inside its limits. Choose Austin for technology work, the higher incomes, the lower homicide rate and a milder January. Choose Fort Worth for a house at under 60% of the price, aerospace, airlines and freight, and a hub airport.
| Measure | Austin | Fort Worth | Advantage |
|---|---|---|---|
| City population | 1,002,632 (2025) | 1,028,117 (2025) | Not directly comparable |
| Metro population | 2,620,945 (2025) | 8,477,157 (2025) | Not directly comparable |
| Five-year growth Growth is pressure on rents and roads as much as it is opportunity, so it is reported without a winner. | 4.6% (2020-2025) | 11.9% (2020-2025) | Not directly comparable |
What a home costs in each
The figures the two cities' rent-versus-buy and mortgage calculators run on, read from the same tables.
| Measure | Austin | Fort Worth | Advantage |
|---|---|---|---|
| Benchmark home price MLS® HPI or equivalent benchmark. Lower is treated as the advantage, which is the buyer's view rather than the owner's. | $560,000 (August 2026) | $327,000 (August 2026) | Fort Worth |
| Detached house benchmark Fort Worth publishes a single house index rather than a composite, so the two rows repeat. | $527,943 | $327,000 | Fort Worth |
| Apartment or condominium benchmark | $355,596 | $330,000 | Fort Worth |
| Two-bedroom rent | $1,812/mo (average, August 2026) | $1,317/mo (median, September 2026) | Fort Worth |
| One-bedroom rent | $1,421/mo | $1,141/mo | Fort Worth |
| Two-bedroom rent against median income A year of two-bedroom rent as a share of the median household income below. A household paying the median rent out of the median income is a fiction, but it is the same fiction in both columns and it crosses currencies. | 24.0% of a year's income | 19.2% of a year's income | Fort Worth |
| Mortgage payment on the benchmark, 20% down 30-year amortization on American monthly compounding, the convention in both. | $2,990/mo at 7.03% | $1,746/mo at 7.03% | Fort Worth |
| Price to household income Benchmark price divided by the median household income below. A ratio is comparable across currencies; the dollars are not. | 6.2× | 4.0× | Fort Worth |
| Property tax on the benchmark home The effective rate on market value, which is what the two rates have in common and what the Advantage column is decided on; the bills are in each city's own dollars. | $9,022/yr (1.611%, 2025) | $5,046/yr (1.543%, 2025) | Fort Worth |
| Transfer tax on the benchmark home Compared as a share of the price. Where the seller pays it, it is a cost of leaving rather than arriving. | None | None | Even |
| Rent control A cap protects a sitting tenant and does nothing for the next lease, so neither column is simply better. | Forbidden by state law | Forbidden by state law | Not directly comparable |
Austin: About 1.61% of value for a homesteaded owner, worked out on the $560,000 median sale price. A house in the City of Austin and Austin ISD is taxed by five units for 2025, which add to 2.046485 per $100 before any exemption. Each takes its own homestead exemption off the appraised value first: Austin ISD the state's $140,000, the City, Travis County and Central Health 20%, and Austin Community College 1% with a $5,000 floor. So Travis County levies 0.375845 per $100 on $448,000 after a $112,000 exemption, $1,684; City of Austin levies 0.524017 per $100 on $448,000 after a $112,000 exemption, $2,348; Austin ISD levies 0.9252 per $100 on $420,000 after a $140,000 exemption, $3,886; Austin Community College levies 0.1034 per $100 on $554,400 after a $5,600 exemption, $573; Central Health levies 0.118023 per $100 on $448,000 after a $112,000 exemption, $529. The five come to $9,019 a year, 1.61% of the price. Without a homestead, as a landlord or a buyer who never files, the same house owes $11,460. These are the 2025 rates, the bills mailed in October 2025. For 2026 the City has adopted 0.579948, the county 0.38621, Central Health 0.132863 and ACC 0.103643, and Austin ISD has proposed 0.9184; on the same house those would come to about 1.67%. Fort Worth: About 1.54% of value for a homesteaded owner, worked out on the $327,000 median single-family sale price. A house in the City of Fort Worth and Fort Worth ISD, the school district more of the city's residents live in than any other, is taxed by six units for 2025, which add to 2.18908 per $100 before any exemption. Each takes its own homestead exemption off the appraised value first, except one: Fort Worth ISD takes the state's $140,000 and nothing more, Tarrant County College 1% with the state's $5,000 floor, Tarrant County, the City and JPS Health Network 20% each, and the Tarrant Regional Water District, which pays for the Fort Worth Floodway, none at all. So Tarrant County levies 0.1862 per $100 on $261,600 after an exemption of $65,400, $487; City of Fort Worth levies 0.67 per $100 on $261,600 after an exemption of $65,400, $1,753; Fort Worth ISD levies 1.0291 per $100 on $187,000 after an exemption of $140,000, $1,924; Tarrant County College levies 0.11228 per $100 on $322,000 after an exemption of $5,000, $362; JPS Health Network levies 0.165 per $100 on $261,600 after an exemption of $65,400, $432; Tarrant Regional Water District levies 0.0265 per $100 on the full $327,000, with no homestead exemption, $87. The six come to $5,044 a year, 1.54% of the price. Without a homestead, as a landlord or a buyer who never files, the same house owes $7,158. In Keller ISD, the district the second most residents live in, the school line is 1.0852 per $100 after the same $140,000, and the same house comes to $5,149, 1.57%. On $295,800, Zillow's August 2026 value for a typical Fort Worth home, the Fort Worth ISD stack comes to $4,425, 1.50%, lower because the school district's flat exemption is a larger share of a cheaper house. These are the 2025 rates, the bills due by 31 January 2026. The City has since adopted 0.70565 for 2026, but when these figures were retrieved the Tarrant County Tax Assessor-Collector's table and the appraisal district's still ran to 2025, so the calculators stay on 2025 until all six units' 2026 rates are published.
How safe each city is, by the numbers it publishes
Police-reported figures for the most recent year each force or statistics agency has released. Rates describe a whole city or metro area, and the spread between neighbourhoods inside one city is usually wider than the gap between the two cities.
| Measure | Austin | Fort Worth | Advantage |
|---|---|---|---|
| Crime Severity Index Statistics Canada's weighted index for the metropolitan area, where 100 is Canada in 2006. American cities have no equivalent series. | Not published | Not published | Not directly comparable |
| Violent crime per 100,000 | 421 (2025) | 375 (2025) | Fort Worth |
| Property crime per 100,000 | 3,093 (2025) | 2,226 (2025) | Fort Worth |
| Homicides Counts, not rates, and a single year in a small city moves a long way on chance alone. What each figure covers is under the table. | 51 (2025) | 78 (2025) | Not directly comparable |
On the FBI's definitions, violent offenses in Austin went from 5,335 in 2022 to 5,046 in 2023, 4,692 in 2024 and 4,221 in 2025, a 10% drop in the last year and 21% in three, and property offenses from 35,035 to 32,900, 32,407 and then 31,011. APD's own NIBRS records for 2025 show aggravated assaults down 13% (3,038 to 2,652), robberies down 5% (835 to 790) and motor vehicle thefts down 26% (5,908 to 4,345), while rapes rose from 501 to 541 and drug offenses, which rise and fall with enforcement, went from 4,097 to 5,256. The 2025 CDE counts were read on 27 September 2026 from a feed last refreshed on 15 September and can still be revised, and APD notes that its open data may differ from its official figures.
What the rates cover: Computed: 4,221 violent offenses (murder, rape, robbery and aggravated assault) in the FBI Crime Data Explorer's summarized data for the Austin Police Department (ORI TX2270100) in calendar 2025, divided by the 1,002,632 Vintage 2025 city population. On the CDE's own agency population of 1,000,639 the rate is 422. APD does not publish a total on this definition: its open NIBRS data sort offenses into crimes against persons (19,469 in 2025, of which 9,464 simple assaults and 5,918 intimidation) and crimes against property (44,250, with robbery, fraud and vandalism inside it), so neither of its totals is the FBI's violent or property count. Summing APD's own 2025 records on the FBI's definition gives 4,219, within two of the CDE.
Homicides: 51 murders and nonnegligent manslaughters in 2025 in both the FBI CDE and APD's open NIBRS data, against 66 in 2024, about 5.1 per 100,000 on the city population. APD's assistant chief put the year's homicides at 55 in January 2026 (KUT), and APD's dataset separately lists 14 negligent manslaughters and 7 justifiable homicides, which the FBI does not count as murder. The high point in the CDE series since 2021 is 81, in 2021.
On the FBI's definitions, violent offenses in Fort Worth went from 5,428 in 2021 to 4,876 in 2022, 4,849 in 2023, 4,641 in 2024 and 3,859 in 2025, a 17% drop in the last year and 29% in four, and property offenses from 25,186 to 26,275, 26,098 and a peak of 27,290 in 2024, then 22,886, 16% below it. Motor vehicle theft rose from 3,687 in 2021 to 5,157 in 2024 and fell to 3,616 in 2025, down 30%. In 2025 the CDE shows aggravated assaults down 18% (3,230 to 2,656), rapes down 18% (613 to 505), robberies down 15% (726 to 620), burglaries down 16% and larcenies down 12%, while murders rose 8% (72 to 78), the one violent measure that went up. Eddie Garcia, Dallas's former police chief, took over the department in September 2025 after months without a permanent chief, and FWPD's own figures for January through August 2026 against the same months of 2025 show robberies down from 436 to 269 and aggravated assaults from 1,842 to 1,557 as well as the drop in murders (WFAA). The 2025 CDE counts were read on 30 September 2026 from a feed last refreshed on 15 September and can still be revised.
What the rates cover: Computed: 3,859 violent offenses (murder, rape, robbery and aggravated assault) in the FBI Crime Data Explorer's summarized data for the Fort Worth Police Department (ORI TX2201200) in calendar 2025, divided by the 1,028,117 Vintage 2025 city population. On the CDE's own agency population of 1,030,410 the rate is also 375. That is the lowest of the Texas cities this site compares, against 532 in San Antonio, 577 in Dallas and 890 in Houston. No FWPD total on this definition was found in anything fetched; the city's quarterly crime reports, as the Fort Worth Star-Telegram described them, count crimes against persons, a broader group that includes assaults and sex offenses, and put them 12% lower in the first half of 2025 than a year earlier.
Homicides: 78 murders and nonnegligent manslaughters in 2025 in the FBI CDE, against 72 in 2024, about 7.6 per 100,000 on the city population. Spectrum News, reading city data in February 2026, also put the year's homicides 8% above 2024. Most of the rise came early: the city's quarterly reports counted 20 homicides in January through March 2025 against 9 a year earlier and 43 in the first half against 31 (Fort Worth Star-Telegram). The CDE series has fallen from 118 in 2021, and 2026 has turned the other way: FWPD counted 36 murders through 31 August against 54 in the same months of 2025 (WFAA).
Winters, summers and what the weather can do to a house
| Measure | Austin | Fort Worth | Advantage |
|---|---|---|---|
| January mean | 11.2 °C | 7.7 °C | Not directly comparable |
| July mean | 29.9 °C | 29.5 °C | Not directly comparable |
| Precipitation a year | 921 mm | 898 mm | Not directly comparable |
| Snowfall a year | 1 cm | 4 cm | Not directly comparable |
| Sunshine a year | 2,644 hours | 2,850 hours | Fort Worth |
NOAA NCEI 1991-2020 normals for Austin Camp Mabry (station USW00013958), the official Austin climate station: January mean 52.2F, July mean 85.8F, annual mean 70.0F, 36.25 in of precipitation, 0.2 in of snow. August is the warmest month at 86.5F, with a mean high of 97.8F; July's mean high is 96.6F and January's mean low is 41.8F. May (5.04 in) and October (3.91 in) are the wettest months, and February (1.89 in) and July (1.96 in) the driest. The normals count 122.8 days a year at 90F or above, 28.7 at 100F or above and 11.9 nights at or below freezing. Austin-Bergstrom International Airport (USW00013904), southeast of downtown, averages 50.1F in January and 84.5F in July with 35.57 in of rain, and its nights run colder, with 33.0 at or below freezing a year. Converted here to 11.2 C, 29.9 C, 921 mm and 0.5 cm. Sunshine hours are the older 1961-1990 NCDC means (2,644 hours, 60% of possible), since the 1991-2020 normals do not include sunshine.
Hazards: Flash flooding on the creeks that cross the city is the recurring danger. The Memorial Day flood of 1981 sent Shoal Creek through central Austin and killed 13 people. On 30 to 31 October 2013 a band of 12 to 14 in (305 to 356 mm) of rain between Wimberley and Driftwood, with 6 to 10 in (152 to 254 mm) over central Travis County, sent Onion Creek through southeast Austin, damaging more than 500 homes and killing five people; in 2014 the city authorized $60 million to buy out homes in the Onion Creek floodplain. Over Memorial Day weekend 2015 the Blanco River at Wimberley, upstream in Hays County, rose from about 5 ft to 41 ft (1.5 m to 12.5 m) in four hours overnight and destroyed 350 to 400 homes in the town, and on the holiday itself Camp Mabry recorded 5.20 in (132 mm) and Shoal Creek flooded again. On 4 to 5 July 2025, 15 to 20 in (381 to 508 mm) fell on the headwaters of Cow Creek and Big Sandy Creek northwest of the city; the Central Texas floods of that week killed 139 people, 18 of them in Travis, Williamson and Burnet counties. Heat is the season to plan around: the normals give Camp Mabry 28.7 days a year at or above 100F (37.8 C), and 2023 had 80, including 45 in a row from 8 July to 21 August that broke the 27-day run of 2011, which still holds the record for a year with 90. The station's highest reading is 112F (44.4 C), in September 2000 and again in August 2011. Cold is rare and badly handled when it comes. Winter Storm Uri left 6.4 in (16.3 cm) of snow at Camp Mabry on 14 to 15 February 2021 and a low of 7F (-13.9 C) on the 16th, the coldest there since December 1989 (the airport reached 6F, or -14.4 C), with 164 hours of freezing temperatures. ERCOT cut power across the state grid from 15 to 18 February, about 4.5 million customers lost it at the worst, more than 40% of Austin Energy's customers were without power and the city was under a boil-water notice for seven days. Texas counted 246 deaths from the storm, 28 of them in Travis County. Drought is the slow hazard. Austin's water depends on Lakes Buchanan and Travis, the Highland Lakes reservoirs LCRA manages; their combined storage fell to 42% in March 2024, when most of LCRA's downstream farm customers went without lake water, and the July 2025 rains took it from 51% to more than 95%. It stood at about 92% on 1 July 2026.
NOAA NCEI 1991-2020 normals for Fort Worth Meacham International Airport (station USW00013961), the city-owned general aviation field inside the city about 5 miles north-northwest of downtown: January mean 45.8F, July mean 85.1F, annual mean 65.9F, 35.34 in of precipitation. Meacham's normals carry no snowfall, so the 1.6 in of snow stored here is the normal at Dallas Fort Worth International Airport (USW00003927), about 20 miles northeast of downtown, where the National Weather Service keeps the metro's official record. August is the warmest month by a tenth of a degree at 85.2F, with a mean high of 95.9F; July's mean high is 95.7F and January's mean low is 35.3F. October (4.46 in) is the wettest month, then May and June (4.02 in each), and January (2.05 in) the driest. The normals count 105.5 days a year at 90F or above, 24.1 at 100F or above and 32.8 nights at or below freezing. DFW Airport averages 46.3F in January and 85.7F in July with 37.01 in of rain, 20.3 days at 100F or above and 29.2 nights at or below freezing. Converted here to 7.7 C, 29.5 C, 898 mm and 4.1 cm. Those 24.1 days at 100F are more than Love Field's 22.4 for Dallas and fewer only than Austin's 28.7 among the Texas cities this site compares, although the July mean is 1.2 C below Dallas's. Sunshine hours are the older 1961-1990 NCDC means that Current Results lists for Dallas (2,850 hours, 61% of possible, and 135 clear days); it lists no separate Fort Worth figure, and the 1991-2020 normals do not include sunshine.
Hazards: Hail is the costly routine hazard. On the evening of 5 May 1995 a supercell dropped hail up to softball size on Mayfest, the outdoor festival on the bank of the Trinity River, where more than 10,000 people were caught in the open: more than 400 were hurt and 60 seriously enough to be hospitalized, though no one died at the festival. The storms went on to kill one driver in a swollen creek in western Tarrant County and 19 people in Dallas County, most of them in floodwater, and the National Weather Service puts the damage at about $2 billion, one of the costliest hailstorms in history. Cotality counted more than 235,000 Texas homes hit by damaging hail in 2025, far more than in any other state, with the risk concentrated in Dallas-Fort Worth and the other Texas Triangle metros. Tornadoes have hit the center of the city. At 6:18 pm on 28 March 2000 a tornado touched down near Castleberry High School, about 4 miles west of downtown, and tracked east along West 7th Street, nearly destroying the Cash America building and heavily damaging Mallick Tower before it weakened over downtown, where debris broke 80% of the windows in the Bank One building and 1,300 of the 5,000 in the Union Pacific Resources building. Two people died and about 80 were injured, 6 of them hospitalized; the Texas Tech damage survey rated it F2. A second tornado later that evening did F3 damage in Arlington and Grand Prairie without a death, and NOAA counts the storms of 28 and 29 March across the South at $690 million ($1.27 billion in 2024 dollars). Flooding shaped the city's form. In May 1949 a night of 6 to 12 in of rain overflowed the Trinity, killing 10 people and leaving more than 13,000 homeless, and the Army Corps of Engineers later built the 27 miles of levees of the Fort Worth Floodway, which the Tarrant Regional Water District maintains. The Corps' $1.16 billion Central City project, known locally as Panther Island, is to carry the river around downtown through new bypass channels and protect more than 2,400 acres; work on the northern half of the channel is due to begin late in 2026 and the project to be finished in 2032. Flash floods on the creeks are the more frequent danger: on 21 and 22 August 2022, 9.56 in (243 mm) fell at Meacham over the two days, 5.11 in (130 mm) of it on the 22nd, and the National Weather Service measured 8.41 in in Fort Worth, with flooding reported from Como and the John T. White neighborhood to West 7th Street; the city's 2016 floodplain plan counted more than $1 billion of stormwater improvements needed. Heat is the constant. The normals give Meacham 24.1 days a year at or above 100F (37.8 C). The summer of 2026 has been among its hottest: 55 days at 100F or above through 27 September, fourth in its record after 72 in 2011, 64 in 2023 and 62 in 1998, and 31 in a row from 3 August to 2 September, the longest run it has recorded; its highest reading is 112F (44.4 C), on 12 July 1998 and 4 September 2000. At DFW Airport the National Weather Service counts 52 days of 100F in 2026 through 22 September, tied for fifth, against the record of 71 in 2011. Cold is rare and badly handled. Winter Storm Uri took Meacham to -2F (-18.9 C) on 16 February 2021, tying 31 January 1949 for the lowest in its record, and DFW Airport also fell to -2F, the lowest there since 1953, with 5.0 in (12.7 cm) of snow over the storm. ERCOT cut power across the state grid from 15 to 18 February and about 4.5 million customers lost it at the worst; Texas counted 246 deaths from the storm, 11 of them in Tarrant County. In January 2026 Winter Storm Fern brought 2.4 in (6.1 cm) of snow and sleet to DFW Airport and a low of 11F (-11.7 C) at Meacham on the 25th.
What people earn and what the government takes
| Measure | Austin | Fort Worth | Advantage |
|---|---|---|---|
| Median household income | $90,430 USD (2024) | $82,503 USD (2024) | Austin |
| Unemployment rate | 3.7% (July 2026) | 4.6% (July 2026) | Austin |
| Sales tax | 8.25% | 8.25% | Even |
| Top marginal income tax Federal plus provincial or state. The American figure leaves out payroll taxes and the cost of health insurance, both of which a Canadian household covers through the tax it pays here. | 37% | 37% | Even |
| Income tax on $100,000, single filer Austin and Fort Worth sit under one province's or state's income tax, so the two cells describe the same tax and any difference between them is one of method rather than of tax. The two cells agree to the dollar here. The Advantage column is Even for that reason, and the essay below says the same thing. | $13,449 USD | $13,449 USD | Even |
BLS counted 1,421,700 nonfarm jobs in the Austin MSA in July 2026 (not seasonally adjusted), up 23,800 or 1.7% on the year. Mining, logging and construction grew fastest (+5.5%), then professional and business services (+3.2%), the largest sector at 294,600 jobs, and other services (+2.7%), while information shrank 4.9% and government, at 201,000 jobs with the state capital and the University of Texas inside it, was flat. The seasonally adjusted series (FRED AUST448NA) was 1,424,000 in August 2026, 1.2% above August 2025. Average weekly wages across the metro were $1,957 in the first quarter of 2026 against $1,654 nationally. Opportunity Austin, the chamber's economic development program, lists Dell Technologies, Apple, Samsung Austin Semiconductor, Tesla, H-E-B, Amazon's fulfillment centers, the State of Texas, the University of Texas, Ascension Seton, St. David's HealthCare and Baylor Scott & White among the employers with 6,000 or more local jobs. bls.gov answered 403 to curl and FRED refused it, so both were read through the web fetcher.
Main sectors: Professional and business services, the metro's largest sector, Technology and advanced manufacturing (Dell Technologies, Apple, Tesla, Samsung Austin Semiconductor, AMD, Applied Materials), Government and education (the state capital, the University of Texas at Austin, the City of Austin), Trade, transportation and utilities (H-E-B, Amazon fulfillment centers), Health care (Ascension Seton, St. David's HealthCare, Baylor Scott & White).
Property tax is the local levy that matters. Tax Foundation puts Texas's effective property tax rate on owner-occupied homes at 1.40%, and school districts must exempt $140,000 of a homestead's value from their tax, plus another $60,000 for owners 65 or older or disabled, after voters raised the general exemption from $100,000 in November 2025. Part of the City of Austin's own rate, 8.75 cents per $100 of taxable value approved with Project Connect in November 2020, pays for the transit program. In November 2025 Austin voters rejected Proposition Q, a city tax rate increase that would have raised nearly $110 million, by 63% to 37%. The county, school district and other levies on the same bill belong to the housing layer.
BLS counted 1,222,100 nonfarm jobs in the Fort Worth-Arlington-Grapevine Metropolitan Division in August 2026 (not seasonally adjusted, preliminary), up 17,800 or 1.5% on the year. Professional and business services grew fastest (+5.0%, to 159,300), then mining, logging and construction (+4.8%, to 92,100), leisure and hospitality (+4.4%, to 145,500) and transportation and warehousing (+2.1%, to 102,600), while financial activities (-2.0%), information (-1.8%) and government (-0.6%, to 136,000) shrank; federal employment fell 9.0%, from 16,700 to 15,200. Manufacturing held at 110,000, of which aerospace product and parts manufacturing was 23,600, up 1.3%. The seasonally adjusted series (SMS48231040000000001) was 1,223,400 in August 2026, 1.5% above August 2025. The Texas Comptroller credits Lockheed Martin with about 49,000 direct and indirect workers in Fort Worth and a $9 billion regional impact, and 25,579 direct employees across Texas, and counts 4,553 direct and 21,266 total jobs and $2.75 billion of state GDP for Naval Air Station Joint Reserve Base Fort Worth in 2025. Hillwood's annual report puts AllianceTexas's economic impact at $12.9 billion in 2025 and $142.9 billion since it opened in 1989, and Hillwood says the Comptroller has recognized it as the primary inland port for the southwestern United States. American Airlines, with 103,440 staff in 2024, and BNSF Railway, with about 36,000, are both headquartered in the city (Wikipedia).
Main sectors: Aerospace and defense (Lockheed Martin Aeronautics, which builds the F-35 at Air Force Plant 4; Bell Textron, headquartered in the city; Naval Air Station Joint Reserve Base Fort Worth, the former Carswell Air Force Base), Airlines and freight rail (American Airlines, headquartered in the city, with its largest hub at DFW Airport; BNSF Railway, headquartered in the city), Logistics and advanced manufacturing at AllianceTexas in far north Fort Worth, which Hillwood says holds 602 companies and 73,134 jobs, Trade, transportation and utilities, the division's largest sector by payroll jobs (289,300 in August 2026), Health care and education (JPS Health Network, Cook Children's Medical Center, Texas Christian University and its medical school).
Property tax is the local levy that matters. Tax Foundation puts Texas's effective property tax rate on owner-occupied homes at 1.40%, and school districts must exempt $140,000 of a homestead's value from their tax. On 15 September 2026 the City Council adopted a $3.33 billion operating budget for fiscal 2027 unanimously and raised the city's rate by 3.565 cents to 70.565 cents per $100 of taxable value on a 7 to 4 vote, to help close a $94 million shortfall. The city says the average homeowner's bill will still fall, by $8.19 to $1,643.64 on a home valued at $232,925, because the Tarrant Appraisal District has not reappraised residential property since 2024 and the average value dropped; the city's total taxable value rose only 0.89%, to $130.2 billion (Fort Worth Report, Community Impact, CBS Texas). The budget also raises stormwater, water, sewer, solid waste and environmental fees by about $7 a month for the average resident. The county, school district, JPS hospital district, Tarrant County College and other levies on the same bill belong to the housing layer.
Whether you need a car
| Measure | Austin | Fort Worth | Advantage |
|---|---|---|---|
| System | CapMetro buses, including four CapMetro Rapid (formerly MetroRapid) lines, and the Red Line, a 32-mile, 10-station commuter rail line from Leander to downtown (CapMetro Rail, long branded MetroRail); no light rail yet, with Project Connect's first 9.8-mile phase due in 2033 | Trinity Metro buses (147 fixed-route and 76 demand-response vehicles), the 27.2-mile TEXRail commuter line with 9 stations from T&P Station downtown through North Richland Hills and Grapevine to DFW Airport Terminal B (opened January 2019), the Trinity Railway Express to Dallas run with DART, ZIPZONE on-demand zones and the downtown Blue Line circulator; Fort Worth is the only full member, with Forest Hill, Grapevine, North Richland Hills and River Oaks partial members | Not directly comparable |
| Commute by public transit | 3.0% (2024) | 0.7% (2024) | Austin |
| Walk or cycle to work | 4.1% (2024) | 1.1% (2024) | Austin |
| Airport | Austin-Bergstrom International Airport (AUS), 21,666,852 passengers in 2025, 0.4% fewer than 2024's 21,762,904 and below the 2023 record of 22.1 million, per the airport's calendar-year activity report; 1.06 million of them were international. It sits about 5 miles southeast of downtown on the former Bergstrom Air Force Base and replaced Robert Mueller Municipal Airport in 1999. | Dallas Fort Worth International Airport (DFW), about 20 miles northeast of downtown Fort Worth and midway between the two cities, handled 85,660,127 passengers in 2025, 2.5% fewer than 2024's 87,817,864, per the airport's December 2025 traffic report; American Airlines, headquartered in Fort Worth, carried 82.6% of them, and TEXRail runs from downtown to Terminal B. Fort Worth Meacham International Airport, owned by the city about 5 miles north-northwest of downtown, has no scheduled airline service and serves general aviation; its 1933 American Airways hangar is on the National Register of Historic Places (Wikipedia). | Not directly comparable |
CapMetro carried 26,283,400 unlinked trips in 2025, 24,067,200 of them by bus and 620,600 on the Red Line, and about 77,400 a weekday in the second quarter of 2026, 1,900 of them by train (APTA ridership reports, as cited by Wikipedia; APTA's PDFs refused the fetcher). Two new CapMetro Rapid lines, 800 and 837, opened in February 2025 and reached 10-minute service in June 2026, and the Red Line gained McKalla Station in 2024, with North Burnet/Uptown Station due in 2027; the Green Line commuter rail project has no funding, environmental review or timeline. Light rail is the unfinished promise. Voters approved Project Connect in November 2020 with a city property tax increase of 8.75 cents per $100 of value, for about 20 miles of light rail reaching the airport at $7.1 billion (Texas Tribune). Its first phase is now 9.8 miles and 15 stations in three directions from downtown, no longer reaching the airport, at an estimated $8.2 billion or more; construction is set to start in 2027 and trains to run in 2033. The FTA gave it environmental clearance in January 2026, but the plan counts on about $4.1 billion in federal money that has not been awarded, and a lawsuit over the scaled-back project is still open.
Trinity Metro carried 6,180,600 unlinked trips in 2025, 4,554,400 of them by bus and 906,800 on TEXRail, and about 22,100 a weekday in the second quarter of 2026, 2,800 of them on TEXRail (APTA ridership reports, as cited by Wikipedia; APTA's PDFs refused the fetcher), against 30.7 million for VIA in San Antonio, 52.8 million for DART and 78.0 million for Houston's METRO. The Trinity Railway Express, which Trinity Metro runs with DART between downtown Fort Worth and downtown Dallas, carried 1,337,600 trips in 2025 (APTA, same source). The system is paid for by a half-cent sales tax Fort Worth has levied since 1984, half what DART's and METRO's cities pay. TEXRail runs every 30 minutes until 7 pm and hourly after, and a 2.1-mile extension to the Medical District on the Near Southside, estimated at about $167 million, is due to break ground by the end of 2026 and open in 2029 (Wikipedia).
Health care, schools and what each city is like
Health care
Care is paid for through employer or marketplace insurance, Medicare and Medicaid, and Texas is one of the ten states that have not expanded Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act (KFF, August 2026). It had the highest uninsured rate of any state in 2024: 16.7%, or 5,152,427 of 30,799,312 people, against 8.2% nationally and 12.0% in Georgia, the next highest, on the ACS 2024 1-year estimates. The City of Austin's rate was 13.0% and Travis County's 12.6%. Ascension Seton runs Dell Seton Medical Center at The University of Texas, the teaching hospital of UT's Dell Medical School, in partnership with Central Health; it is the region's only adult Level I trauma center and serves 11 Central Texas counties. St. David's HealthCare, a partnership between HCA Healthcare and two local nonprofits, has more than 160 sites and calls itself the Austin area's fourth-largest private employer, and Baylor Scott & White joins both systems on the chamber's list of employers with 6,000 or more local jobs. UT and the Michael & Susan Dell Foundation are building the UT Dell Medical Center, with a new UT MD Anderson Cancer Center, beside Dell Seton on the former Frank Erwin Center site, to open in 2030; the UT System put the plan at $2.5 billion when it was announced in August 2023. This file did not verify a wait time figure for primary or specialist care.
Education
Austin ISD, which covers 230 square miles in the middle of the metro, counted 65,951 students in fall 2026, down 3,765 from 69,716 in 2025-26 and from 72,702 in 2024-25. More than 6,400 students enrolled at the end of last year did not return, and the district fell more than 2,000 short of its own projection (Austin Current, 24 September 2026); district officials told KUT that more than half of the 2025-26 loss could be attributed to families' fear of immigration enforcement, with housing costs and falling birth rates also named. In November 2025 the board approved closing and consolidating 10 schools from the 2026-27 school year, affecting 3,796 students and removing 6,319 seats, together with 24 turnaround plans the Texas Education Agency requires for campuses with repeated unacceptable ratings, adopted to head off state-ordered closures or a takeover. The University of Texas at Austin enrolled a record 55,000 students in fall 2025, 44,314 of them undergraduates, the largest total in its history.
Living there
Austin is the Texas state capital and a university town that has become a technology metro, and its growth has outrun what the city has built for it. The metro passed 2.6 million in 2025 after adding 337,554 people since April 2020, but the city grew by less than 5%, and in 2024-25 Travis County lost 6,590 more people to the rest of the country than it gained, so domestic movers now settle in Williamson and Hays counties instead. Inside the city a quarter of workers work from home, 57.5% drive alone and 3.0% take transit, and the one rail line carries about 1,900 riders a weekday. Summer sets the terms of daily life, with a July mean of 85.8F at Camp Mabry and about 29 days at 100F or more in a normal year, and the creeks that cross the city flood fast. Texas takes no income tax and has the highest uninsured rate of any state. The open question is whether Austin can build the transit and keep the schools its growth calls for: voters approved light rail in 2020, and six years later the first 9.8 miles are not due until 2033 and have no federal money, while Austin ISD, down more than 14,000 students in a decade, closed ten schools in 2026.
Health care
Care is paid for through employer or marketplace insurance, Medicare and Medicaid, and Texas is one of the ten states that have not expanded Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act (KFF). It had the highest uninsured rate of any state in 2024: 16.7%, or 5,152,427 of 30,799,312 people, against 8.2% nationally and 12.0% in Georgia, the next highest, on the ACS 2024 1-year estimates. The City of Fort Worth's rate was 18.9% (189,692 of 1,003,516), Tarrant County's 16.9% and the metro's 16.2%. JPS Health Network, the Tarrant County Hospital District, runs John Peter Smith Hospital, the county's public hospital, a Level I trauma center and the only psychiatric emergency site in the county; on 16 April 2026 it broke ground on a $1.5 billion replacement hospital at South Main and East Morphy streets, part of a $2.5 billion building plan backed by an $800 million bond from 2018, which will take it from 582 beds to more than 740 when it opens in 2030 (Fort Worth Report). Cook Children's Medical Center has 452 licensed beds and a Level II pediatric trauma center (Wikipedia). TCU's Anne Burnett Marion School of Medicine took its first class in 2019. This file did not verify a wait time figure for primary or specialist care.
Education
Fort Worth is served by Fort Worth ISD and, in parts, by fourteen other districts, among them Keller, Northwest, Eagle Mountain-Saginaw, Crowley and Arlington (the 2020 Census school district map, as cited by Wikipedia). Fort Worth ISD is now under state control: after a campus received a fifth straight failing rating, Education Commissioner Mike Morath decided in October 2025 to intervene, and on 24 March 2026 he replaced the elected trustees' authority with a nine-member board of managers led by Pete Geren and named Peter Licata, formerly of Broward County, superintendent. It is the second-largest takeover in Texas history, after Houston ISD's. The board opened by saying roughly 63% of students do not read at grade level and 29% are proficient in math (Fort Worth Report). The district, built for 90,000 students, had 67,315 in 2025-26 on Texas Education Agency data and projected about 66,500 for 2026-27; it has lost more than 12,000 in five years and in May 2025 approved closing 18 campuses by June 2029 (CBS Texas). Texas Christian University (12,980 students in fall 2025) is about 4 miles from downtown, and the city also holds Texas Wesleyan University, UNT Health Fort Worth and Texas A&M University's law school and downtown campus.
Living there
Fort Worth has grown faster than any other US city of a million people: 11.9% since 2020, and 19,512 residents in 2024-25, a gain second only to Charlotte's; it passed a million in 2024. It is the western half of the Dallas-Fort Worth metro and works differently from Dallas: its economy leans on aircraft, airlines and freight, from the F-35 line at Lockheed Martin's plant and Bell's helicopters to the headquarters of American Airlines and BNSF and the warehouses and factories of AllianceTexas, and household income, at $82,503, is higher than in Dallas, Houston or San Antonio. It is built for the car: 74.9% of workers drive alone and 0.7% take transit, the lowest share of any city this site compares, though TEXRail runs to DFW Airport. Violent crime, at 375 per 100,000 on the FBI's counts, is the lowest of the Texas cities here. Summer is long and hot, with 24 days a year at 100F or above and 31 in a row in 2026, and hail and tornadoes are the costly weather. Texas takes no income tax, and 18.9% of residents have no health insurance. The open questions are the costs of growth: the council raised its property tax rate in September 2026 to cover a $94 million gap as appraisals stalled, the state took over the shrinking Fort Worth ISD in March 2026, and the Panther Island flood channels around downtown are not due until 2032.
Where each city wins, and where it loses
Both cities are in Texas and both were priced at Freddie Mac's 7.03% rate for 24 September 2026, so the rate and the state's rules are the same on both sides: no transfer or mortgage tax, no rent control, and for a homestead a $140,000 school exemption and a 10% annual cap on appraised value. Both prices are MLS medians of sales inside the city, from different systems. Austin's is the Unlock MLS median of what sold in the city, $560,000 in August 2026, 4.3% below a year earlier. Fort Worth's is the North Texas Real Estate Information System's median of single-family houses sold in the city, $327,000 in August, 0.9% below, on 805 sales. Zillow's index, which models every home in each city, stood at $497,418 for Austin and $295,800 for the City of Fort Worth in August, so the order holds on a measure that is the same in both. At 20% down, Austin's $448,000 loan costs about $2,990 a month and Fort Worth's $261,600 loan about $1,746. Property tax is $9,019 a year in Austin and $5,044 in Fort Worth with a homestead, and insurance is budgeted at $300 and $350 a month, the Fort Worth figure raised by North Texas hail, with no flood policy in either. The three lines come to about $4,041 and $2,516, roughly 54% and 37% of each city's 2024 median household income; of the $1,525 gap about $1,244 is the mortgage and $331 the property tax, less the $50 more Fort Worth budgets for insurance. Rents are on different series. RentCafe's August averages for Austin were $1,421 for a one-bedroom and $1,812 for a two-bedroom; Apartment List's September medians for Fort Worth were $1,141 and $1,317. Zillow's observed rent index, the same measure in both, runs the other way, $1,586 in Austin and $1,615 in Fort Worth in August.
The definitions match: both cities' figures are the FBI's summarized counts for 2025, divided by Census Vintage 2025 populations, read on 27 September 2026 for Austin and 30 September for Fort Worth. The two split. Fort Worth's 3,859 violent offenses come to 375 per 100,000 against Austin's 421 on 4,221, the lowest rate of the Texas cities this site compares, and its property offenses to 2,226 against 3,093. Homicide runs the other way: 78 in Fort Worth, about 7.6 per 100,000, against 51 in Austin, about 5.1, and Fort Worth's was the one violent measure that rose in 2025, from 72. The departments' own counts: APD's assistant chief counted 55 homicides for 2025, and FWPD counted 36 murders from January through August 2026 against 54 in the same months of 2025. Both are falling. Violent offenses dropped 17% in Fort Worth in 2025 and 29% in four years, and 10% in Austin, 21% in three years. Motor vehicle theft is close: 4,332 in Austin's federal count for 2025 and 3,616 in Fort Worth's, down 30% from 5,157. Both sets of counts can still be revised.
Austin has the milder winter and Fort Worth the colder one; both have hard summers. January averages 11.2 C at Camp Mabry against 7.7 C at Meacham, with 11.9 nights a year at or below freezing against 32.8, and July 29.9 C against 29.5 C. Austin's normals count 122.8 days a year at 90F or above against 105.5. They count 28.7 at or above 37.8 C (100F) against 24.1, and those are the most and second-most of the Texas cities this site compares; 2023 had 80 in Austin, and Meacham had 55 in 2026 through 27 September, 31 of them in a row. Rain is close, 921 mm in Austin and 898 mm in Fort Worth, and snow 0.5 cm against 4.1 cm, the Fort Worth figure DFW Airport's. The hazards differ. Austin's is the flash flood on creeks that rise within minutes: the Memorial Day flood of 1981 killed 13 people, and the Central Texas floods of July 2025 killed 139. Fort Worth's costly one is hail. The Mayfest storm of 5 May 1995 dropped hail up to softball size on more than 10,000 people at a festival by the Trinity, hurting more than 400, and did about $2 billion of damage across Tarrant and Dallas counties, and on 28 March 2000 a tornado tracked along West 7th Street into downtown and killed two; its creeks flood too, 9.56 in (243 mm) at Meacham over two days in August 2022. Winter Storm Uri brought 7F (-13.9 C) to Austin and -2F (-18.9 C) to Meacham in February 2021 while ERCOT cut power across the state grid, and Texas counted 28 of the storm's 246 deaths in Travis County and 11 in Tarrant.
The two job markets are about the same size and growing at about the same pace. BLS counted 1,421,700 nonfarm jobs around Austin in July 2026, 1.7% more than a year earlier, and 1,222,100 in the Fort Worth-Arlington-Grapevine division, Fort Worth's half of the Dallas-Fort Worth metro, in August, 1.5% more. On the same unadjusted basis unemployment in July was 4.0% around Austin and 4.6% in the Fort Worth division, against 4.4% nationally. Austin runs on technology, state government and the University of Texas, and its average weekly wage was $1,957 in the first quarter of 2026 against $1,654 nationally; Fort Worth's profile carries no wage figure. Fort Worth runs on aircraft, airlines and freight: Lockheed Martin builds the F-35 at Air Force Plant 4, with about 49,000 direct and indirect workers in the city on the Texas Comptroller's count, Bell Textron, American Airlines and BNSF Railway have their headquarters there, and AllianceTexas in the far north holds 73,134 jobs by its developer's count. Federal jobs in the Fort Worth division fell 9.0% on the year. City median household income was $90,430 in Austin and $82,503 in Fort Worth in 2024, and Austin's metro's $99,897 against Dallas-Fort Worth's $92,733. The state's taxes are shared: no income tax, so $100,000 pays $13,449 in both for 2025, and 8.25% sales tax. The property tax stacks are alike in shape and not in rate. In both, the school district grants the state's $140,000 and nothing more, the community college 1% with a $5,000 floor, and the county, the City and the hospital district 20% each. But Fort Worth's six units add to 2.18908 per $100 and Austin's five to 2.046485, and Fort Worth's sixth, the Tarrant Regional Water District, grants no homestead exemption at all, so the same house pays more in Fort Worth: $5,044 against $4,726 on $327,000, and $9,668 against $9,019 on $560,000.
Neither is a transit city, and Fort Worth is the least of one on this site. In 2024, 3.0% of Austin workers took transit and 4.1% walked or cycled, against 0.7% and 1.1% in Fort Worth, and 57.5% drove alone against 74.9%; 24.8% of Austin's workers worked from home against 10.5%. CapMetro carried 26,283,400 trips in 2025, 620,600 of them on the Red Line commuter rail from Leander. Trinity Metro carried 6,180,600, 906,800 of them on TEXRail, the 27.2-mile commuter line from downtown Fort Worth to DFW Airport, and runs the Trinity Railway Express to Dallas with DART. Both have a next step, on different scales. Austin's first 9.8 miles of light rail are due in 2033 at an estimated $8.2 billion or more and count on about $4.1 billion in federal money not yet awarded. Fort Worth's is a 2.1-mile TEXRail extension to the Medical District, estimated at about $167 million, due to break ground by the end of 2026 and open in 2029. Transit takes 1% of the sales tax in Austin and half a cent in Fort Worth, which it has levied since 1984. The airports are far apart. Austin-Bergstrom handled 21,666,852 passengers in 2025, 1.06 million of them international. DFW, American's largest hub, about 20 miles northeast of downtown Fort Worth, handled 85,660,127, about four times as many, and American, which carried 82.6% of them, is headquartered in Fort Worth.
The state question is shared and the local answer is not. Texas is one of ten states that have not expanded Medicaid and had the highest uninsured rate of any state in 2024, 16.7%; the City of Austin's rate was 13.0% and the City of Fort Worth's 18.9%. Austin's anchor is Dell Seton Medical Center, the region's only adult Level I trauma center, with a new MD Anderson cancer center due beside it in 2030. Fort Worth's public hospital is JPS Health Network's John Peter Smith Hospital, Tarrant County's Level I trauma center and its only psychiatric emergency site, which broke ground on 16 April 2026 on a $1.5 billion replacement that will take it from 582 beds to more than 740 in 2030; Cook Children's Medical Center has 452 licensed beds. Neither profile verified a wait time. The two central school districts are now about the same size and both shrinking. Austin ISD counted 65,951 students in fall 2026, 3,765 fewer than a year earlier, and closed or consolidated 10 schools. Fort Worth ISD, built for 90,000, had 67,315 in 2025-26 and has approved closing 18 campuses by June 2029, and on 24 March 2026 the Education Commissioner replaced its elected trustees with a board of managers, the second-largest takeover in Texas after Houston ISD's. The University of Texas enrolled a record 55,000 in fall 2025; TCU, about 4 miles from downtown Fort Worth, has 12,980.
What people underestimate is that Fort Worth is now the larger city. It had 1,028,117 residents in July 2025 against Austin's 1,002,632, grew 11.9% from 2020, the fastest of the twelve US cities of more than a million, against Austin's 4.6%, and added 19,512 in the last year, the second-largest gain of any US city. The metros tell a different story: Austin-Round Rock-San Marcos, 2,620,945 people, grew 14.8% as newcomers went to Williamson and Hays counties, and in 2024-25 Travis County lost 6,590 more residents to the rest of the country than it gained, and Tarrant 6,978. Fort Worth's own growth since 2020 has mostly been on its northern edge, inside the city limits. So each bill is for one address: $9,019 inside the City of Austin and Austin ISD, $5,044 inside the City of Fort Worth and Fort Worth ISD. An address in Austin's extraterritorial jurisdiction may pay a municipal utility district; newer Fort Worth subdivisions often sit in a public improvement district, 0.155 per $100 on a house in Park Glen or $482 to $1,559 a year per lot in Walsh Ranch's first phase, and in Keller ISD, the district the second most Fort Worth residents live in, the same $327,000 house pays $5,149. After a purchase the state's rules are the same, a buyer taxed at full value and then a 10% annual cap. The rates are moving. Four of Austin's five units had adopted 2026 rates by 27 September and Austin ISD had only proposed its own. Fort Worth's council voted 7 to 4 on 15 September 2026 to raise the City's rate by 3.565 cents, from the 67 cents in the $5,044 to 70.565, to help close a $94 million shortfall.
Better here
- Homicide was 51 in 2025, about 5.1 per 100,000, against 78 in Fort Worth at about 7.6, on the same FBI counts.
- City median household income was $90,430 in 2024 against $82,503 in Fort Worth, and the average weekly wage was $1,957 in the first quarter of 2026 against $1,654 nationally.
- Unemployment was 4.0% around Austin in July 2026, not seasonally adjusted, against 4.6% in the Fort Worth division on the same basis.
- The City of Austin's uninsured rate was 13.0% in 2024 against 18.9% in the City of Fort Worth, in the same state without Medicaid expansion.
- In 2024, 3.0% of workers took transit, 4.1% walked or cycled and 24.8% worked from home, against 0.7%, 1.1% and 10.5% in Fort Worth.
- January averages 11.2 C with 11.9 nights a year at or below freezing, against 7.7 C and 32.8 at Meacham.
Worse here
- Mortgage, property tax and insurance come to about $4,041 a month on the August 2026 median, against $2,516 on Fort Worth's at the same 7.03% rate.
- Zillow's index for Austin stood at $497,418 in August 2026 against $295,800 for the City of Fort Worth, on the same measure.
- Property tax on the median is $9,019 a year with a homestead, against $5,044 on Fort Worth's.
- The normals count 28.7 days a year at or above 37.8 C (100F) at Camp Mabry, the most of the Texas cities this site compares, against 24.1 at Meacham, and 2023 had 80.
- Light rail's first 9.8 miles are not due until 2033 and count on about $4.1 billion in federal money not yet awarded.
- Austin-Bergstrom handled 21,666,852 passengers in 2025, about a quarter of DFW's 85,660,127.
Choose Austin if
- you work in technology, chip making, state government or at the University of Texas
- you want the lower homicide rate and would take the higher property crime rate with it
- you want a city where a quarter of workers work from home and more of the rest walk, cycle or ride transit
- you would pay about $1,525 a month more to own for the higher incomes and an 11.2 C January
The Austin guide · Neighborhoods · Austin rent vs buy · Austin mortgage calculator
Better here
- Mortgage, property tax and insurance come to about $2,516 a month on the August 2026 median, roughly 37% of the city's median household income, against $4,041 and 54% in Austin at the same 7.03% rate.
- Violent crime ran 375 per 100,000 in 2025 against 421 in Austin, and property crime 2,226 against 3,093, on the same FBI counts.
- Zillow's index for the City of Fort Worth stood at $295,800 in August 2026, about 60% of the $497,418 the same index gives Austin.
- DFW, American's largest hub, handled 85,660,127 passengers in 2025, about four times Austin-Bergstrom's 21,666,852, and TEXRail runs to it from downtown.
- The city added 19,512 residents in 2024-25, the second-largest gain of any US city, and grew 11.9% from 2020 against Austin's 4.6%.
- Lockheed Martin's F-35 line, Bell Textron, the headquarters of American Airlines and BNSF Railway, and AllianceTexas's 73,134 jobs are in the city.
Worse here
- On the same $327,000 house the six taxing units take $5,044 a year where Austin's five would take $4,726, an effective 1.54% against 1.45%.
- Homicides rose from 72 to 78 in 2025, about 7.6 per 100,000, against 51 and about 5.1 in Austin.
- In 2024, 0.7% of workers took transit, the lowest share of any city this site compares, and 74.9% drove alone against 57.5% in Austin.
- January averages 7.7 C with 32.8 nights a year at or below freezing, against 11.2 C and 11.9 at Camp Mabry.
- The City of Fort Worth's uninsured rate was 18.9% in 2024 against 13.0% in the City of Austin.
- Fort Worth ISD has been run by a state-appointed board since 24 March 2026, and the board says roughly 63% of its students do not read at grade level.
Choose Fort Worth if
- you work in aerospace, defense manufacturing, airlines, freight rail or logistics
- you want to own at about $2,516 a month rather than $4,041
- you want the lower violent and property crime rates, on figures built the same way
- you fly often enough that a hub airport with a train from downtown changes how you travel
The Fort Worth guide · Neighborhoods · Fort Worth rent vs buy · Fort Worth mortgage calculator
Austin or Fort Worth, in short
Is Austin or Fort Worth cheaper to live in?
Fort Worth, by a wide margin, and by a little less against local pay. Both cities were priced at the same 7.03% mortgage rate of 24 September 2026, so the figures net directly. Austin's median sale price inside the city was $560,000 in August 2026 and Fort Worth's single-family median $327,000; Zillow's index for each city, $497,418 against $295,800, keeps the order. At 20% down the mortgage is about $2,990 against $1,746. Property tax is $9,019 a year against $5,044 with a homestead, and insurance $300 a month against $350, so the three lines come to about $4,041 in Austin and $2,516 in Fort Worth, roughly 54% and 37% of each city's median household income, $90,430 and $82,503. Renting is close: Zillow's observed rent index was $1,586 in Austin and $1,615 in Fort Worth in August. Income tax is nil in both and sales tax 8.25% in both.
Is Austin or Fort Worth safer?
It splits, on figures built the same way. Both are the FBI's summarized counts for 2025 divided by Census estimates, read on 27 and 30 September 2026. Fort Worth is lower on violent offenses, 375 per 100,000 against 421, and on property offenses, 2,226 against 3,093. Austin is lower on homicide: 51, about 5.1 per 100,000, against 78 in Fort Worth, about 7.6. Both improved in 2025, violent offenses dropping 10% in Austin and 17% in Fort Worth, and FWPD's own count for January through August 2026 was 36 murders against 54 a year earlier. Every rate here is a count divided by a Census estimate rather than a published rate, and the counts can still be revised.
Which is hotter, Austin or Fort Worth?
Austin, over the year, and Fort Worth is the colder in winter. July averages 29.9 C at Camp Mabry and 29.5 C at Meacham, and the normals count 28.7 days a year at or above 37.8 C (100F) in Austin against 24.1 in Fort Worth, and 122.8 days at 90F or above against 105.5. January is where they part: 11.2 C in Austin against 7.7 C, with 11.9 nights at or below freezing against 32.8. Rain is close, 921 mm against 898 mm. Austin's hazard is the flash flood; Fort Worth's costly ones are hail and tornadoes, which is why its insurance is budgeted at $350 a month against $300. In both, flood cover is a separate policy.
Why does the same house pay more property tax in Fort Worth than in Austin?
Because Fort Worth's units levy more, and one of them exempts nothing. The state frame is the same: a $140,000 homestead exemption from the school levy and a 10% annual cap on a homestead's appraised value that starts after purchase. The stacks are alike in shape: in both, the school district grants the state's $140,000 and nothing more, the college district 1% with a $5,000 floor, and the county, the City and the hospital district 20% each. But Fort Worth's six units add to 2.18908 per $100 before exemptions and Austin's five to 2.046485, and Fort Worth's sixth, the Tarrant Regional Water District, which pays for the Fort Worth Floodway, taxes a homestead on its full value. So on the same $327,000 house Fort Worth's stack comes to $5,044, an effective 1.54%, and Austin's to $4,726; on Austin's $560,000 median it is $9,668 against $9,019. Without a homestead Fort Worth's median would owe $7,158. None of this includes a utility or improvement district.
Where the figures come from
Housing figures are the ones behind each city's calculators, dated on those pages. The rest are listed here with the date they were retrieved. See the methodology for how facts, estimates and opinion are kept apart.
- Annual Estimates of the Resident Population for Incorporated Places in Texas: April 1, 2020 to July 1, 2025 (SUB-EST2025) · US Census Bureau · retrieved Supports: City population, Five-year growth, Violent crime rate, Property crime rate, Homicides, Character
- Annual Resident Population Estimates and Components of Change for Metropolitan and Micropolitan Statistical Areas and Their Counties: April 1, 2020 to July 1, 2025 (CBSA-EST2025-ALLDATA) · US Census Bureau · retrieved Supports: Metro population, Five-year growth, Character
- Crime Data Explorer summarized agency data, Austin Police Department (TX2270100): violent crime, property crime and homicide, 2021-2025 · FBI · retrieved Supports: Violent crime rate, Property crime rate, Homicides, Crime trend
- NIBRS Group A Offense Crimes (Austin Police Department open data, updated 14 September 2026) · City of Austin Open Data · retrieved Supports: Violent crime rate, Property crime rate, Homicides, Crime trend
- Austin's crime dropped below pre-pandemic highs in 2025 · KUT Radio, Austin's NPR Station · retrieved Supports: Homicides, Crime trend
- US Climate Normals 1991-2020, station USW00013958 Austin Camp Mabry (Access Data Service) · NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information · retrieved Supports: January mean, July mean, Annual precipitation, Annual snowfall, Climate normals, Climate hazards, Character, January 52.2F, July 85.8F and August 86.5F from the monthly series, and annual mean 70.0F, precipitation 36.25 in, snowfall 0.2 in and the counts of days at 90F and 100F and nights at freezing from dataset=normals-annualseasonal-1991-2020 for the same station
- US Climate Normals 1991-2020, station USW00013904 Austin-Bergstrom International Airport (Access Data Service) · NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information · retrieved Supports: Climate normals
- Global Historical Climatology Network daily summaries, Austin Camp Mabry (USW00013958), 1938-2026 · NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information · retrieved Supports: Climate hazards, 80 days at or above 100F in 2023 and 45 in a row from 8 July to 21 August, 90 in 2011 with a 27-day run, 112F on 5 September 2000 and 28 August 2011, 6.4 in of snow on 14 and 15 February 2021, 7F on 16 February 2021 and 4F on 23 December 1989, 5.20 in on 25 May 2015
- Global Historical Climatology Network daily summaries, Austin-Bergstrom International Airport (USW00013904), February 2021 · NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information · retrieved Supports: Climate hazards
- Average Annual Sunshine in US Cities · Current Results (NCDC Comparative Climatic Data, 1961-1990) · retrieved Supports: Sunshine hours
- This Holiday Weekend Marks The 40th Anniversary Of Austin's 1981 Memorial Day Flood · KUT Radio, Austin's NPR Station · retrieved Supports: Climate hazards
- October 30-31, 2013 Halloween Flash Flood Event · National Weather Service, Austin/San Antonio · retrieved Supports: Climate hazards
- Lower Onion Creek Flood Mitigation Buyout Project Gets Kudos from Homeowners · FEMA · retrieved Supports: Climate hazards
- 2015 Memorial Day Weekend Flooding, 23 to 24 May 2015 (Weather Event Summary) · National Weather Service, Austin/San Antonio · retrieved Supports: Climate hazards
- Tornado outbreak and floods of May 23 to 26, 2015 (Wimberley homes destroyed, Shoal Creek on May 25) · Wikipedia · retrieved Supports: Climate hazards
- National Weather Service releases new report on deadly Central Texas floods · KXAN Austin (via Yahoo News) · retrieved Supports: Climate hazards
- 2021 Winter Storm Uri After-Action Review, Findings Report · City of Austin and Travis County · retrieved Supports: Climate hazards
- February 2021 Winter Storm-Related Deaths, Texas (mortality surveillance report) · Texas Department of State Health Services · retrieved Supports: Climate hazards
- The Timeline and Events of the February 2021 Texas Electric Grid Blackouts · The University of Texas at Austin Energy Institute · retrieved Supports: Climate hazards
- Highland Lakes and Colorado River · Lower Colorado River Authority · retrieved Supports: Climate hazards
- Most LCRA agricultural customers will go without Highland Lakes water in 2024 · Lower Colorado River Authority · retrieved Supports: Climate hazards
- Drought persists in Central Texas, Water Management Plan under review · Community Impact · retrieved Supports: Climate hazards
- Water Supply Operations · Lower Colorado River Authority · retrieved Supports: Climate hazards
- ACS 2024 1-year tables B08301 and B19013 for Austin city and the Austin-Round Rock-San Marcos MSA · Census Reporter API (US Census Bureau ACS) · retrieved Supports: Median household income, Transit commute share, Walk and cycle commute share, Character
- ACS 2024 1-year table B27001 (health insurance coverage) for the 50 states, DC, the US, Travis County and Austin city · Census Reporter API (US Census Bureau ACS) · retrieved Supports: Health care, Character
- Unemployment Rate in Austin-Round Rock-San Marcos, TX (MSA), AUST448UR and AUST448URN · FRED, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis (BLS LAUS data) · retrieved Supports: Unemployment rate
- All Employees: Total Nonfarm in Austin-Round Rock-San Marcos, TX (MSA), AUST448NA · FRED, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis (BLS CES data) · retrieved Supports: Labour market
- Austin Area Economic Summary · US Bureau of Labor Statistics · retrieved Supports: Unemployment rate, Main sectors, Labour market
- Major Employers · Opportunity Austin (Austin Chamber of Commerce) · retrieved Supports: Main sectors, Labour market, Health care
- City Sales and Use Tax (city rate table) · Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts · retrieved Supports: Sales tax
- Transit Sales and Use Tax (Austin MTA, effective July 1, 1985) · Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts · retrieved Supports: Sales tax
- Sales and Use Tax · Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts · retrieved Supports: Sales tax
- Texas Tax Rates & Rankings · Tax Foundation · retrieved Supports: Top marginal income tax, Income tax on $100,000, Tax notes, Character
- 2025 Tax Brackets and Federal Income Tax Rates · Tax Foundation · retrieved Supports: Top marginal income tax, Income tax on $100,000
- 2026 Tax Brackets and Federal Income Tax Rates · Tax Foundation · retrieved Supports: Top marginal income tax, Income tax on $100,000
- Property Tax Exemptions · Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts · retrieved Supports: Tax notes
- Voters OK property tax breaks for Texas homeowners, businesses · The Texas Tribune · retrieved Supports: Tax notes
- Austin voters reject Proposition Q, a tax rate increase to fund city services · KUT Radio, Austin's NPR Station · retrieved Supports: Tax notes
- CapMetro (citing the APTA Transit Ridership Reports, Q4 2025 and Q2 2026) · Wikipedia · retrieved Supports: Transit system, Transit ridership, Character
- CapMetro Rail (Red Line: Leander to Downtown, 32 miles, 10 stations) · Wikipedia · retrieved Supports: Transit system
- What's on track and behind schedule with Austin's transit expansion nearly 6 years later · KUT Radio, Austin's NPR Station · retrieved Supports: Transit system, Transit ridership, Tax notes, Character
- How Austin's Project Connect went off the rails · The Texas Tribune · retrieved Supports: Transit ridership, Character
- Aviation Activity Report, Calendar Year 2025 vs 2024, Combined Terminals · Austin-Bergstrom International Airport · retrieved Supports: Airport passengers
- Austin-Bergstrom International Airport (annual passenger traffic table and history) · Wikipedia · retrieved Supports: Airport passengers
- Status of State Medicaid Expansion Decisions · KFF · retrieved Supports: Health care
- Dell Seton Medical Center · Wikipedia · retrieved Supports: Health care
- Dell Seton Medical Center at The University of Texas · Ascension Seton · retrieved Supports: Health care
- About St. David's HealthCare · St. David's HealthCare · retrieved Supports: Health care
- Building World-Class Health Care in Austin · Michael & Susan Dell Foundation · retrieved Supports: Health care
- Austin ISD Board approves 24 state-mandated turnaround plans, school consolidation and programmatic reassignments · Austin Independent School District · retrieved Supports: Education
- District Demographics · Austin Independent School District · retrieved Supports: Education
- Austin ISD enrollment dips as transportation costs rise · Austin Current · retrieved Supports: Education, Character
- Austin ISD loses 3,000 students amid school closures and budget crisis · KUT Radio, Austin's NPR Station · retrieved Supports: Education, Character
- UT Sets All-Time Highs for Enrollment and Student Performance · UT News, The University of Texas at Austin · retrieved Supports: Education
- Annual Estimates of the Resident Population for Incorporated Places of 50,000 or More (all states, SUB-EST2025) · US Census Bureau · retrieved Supports: City population, Five-year growth, Character
- Crime Data Explorer summarized agency data, Fort Worth Police Department (TX2201200): violent crime, property crime, homicide, rape, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary, larceny, motor vehicle theft and arson, 2021-2025 · FBI · retrieved Supports: Violent crime rate, Property crime rate, Homicides, Crime trend, Character
- Dallas sees drop in violent crime while Fort Worth sees increase in homicides · Spectrum News · retrieved Supports: Homicides, Crime trend
- After 'puzzling' spike in homicides, Fort Worth leaders look to new police chief · Fort Worth Star-Telegram (via Yahoo News) · retrieved Supports: Violent crime rate, Homicides
- Eddie Garcia marks one year as Fort Worth police chief, shares reasons behind city's drop in violent crime · WFAA (via Yahoo News) · retrieved Supports: Homicides, Crime trend
- US Climate Normals 1991-2020, station USW00013961 Fort Worth Meacham International Airport (Access Data Service) · NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information · retrieved Supports: January mean, July mean, Annual precipitation, Climate normals, Climate hazards, Character, January 45.8F, July 85.1F and August 85.2F from the monthly series, which carries no snowfall normal for this station, and annual mean 65.9F, precipitation 35.34 in and the counts of days at 90F and 100F and nights at freezing from dataset=normals-annualseasonal-1991-2020 for the same station
- US Climate Normals 1991-2020, station USW00003927 Dallas Fort Worth International Airport (Access Data Service) · NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information · retrieved Supports: Annual snowfall, Climate normals, 1.6 in of snow, January 46.3F, July 85.7F, 37.01 in of precipitation, 20.3 days at 100F and 29.2 nights at freezing, the last three from dataset=normals-annualseasonal-1991-2020
- Global Historical Climatology Network daily summaries, Fort Worth Meacham International Airport (USW00013961), 1946-1953 and 1992-2026 · NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information · retrieved Supports: Climate hazards, Character, 55 days at or above 100F in 2026 through 27 September, 72 in 2011, 64 in 2023 and 62 in 1998, 31 in a row from 3 August to 2 September 2026, 112F on 12 July 1998 and 4 September 2000, -2F on 16 February 2021 and 31 January 1949, 4.45 in on 21 August 2022 and 5.11 in on 22 August 2022, 11F on 25 January 2026
- Global Historical Climatology Network daily summaries, Dallas Fort Worth International Airport (USW00003927), 1953-2026 · NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information · retrieved Supports: Climate hazards, -2F on 16 February 2021, 5.0 in of snow on 14 and 17 February 2021, 2.4 in of snow and sleet on 24 and 25 January 2026
- Dallas/Fort Worth: Annual and Consecutive 100 Degree Days (last updated 22 September 2026) · National Weather Service, Fort Worth/Dallas · retrieved Supports: Climate hazards
- Mayfest Hailstorm, May 5, 1995 · National Weather Service, Fort Worth/Dallas · retrieved Supports: Climate hazards
- Cotality 2026 Report: Hail risk now rivals major hurricanes (2026 Severe Convective Storm Risk Report) · Cotality · retrieved Supports: Climate hazards
- March 28, 2000: 10th Anniversary, a review of the March 28, 2000 tornadoes affecting Fort Worth and Arlington (from NWS Storm Data) · National Weather Service, Fort Worth/Dallas · retrieved Supports: Climate hazards
- Damage Survey and Assessment of Fort Worth Tornado, 28 March 2000 · Texas Tech University Wind Science and Engineering Research Center · retrieved Supports: Climate hazards
- 2000 Fort Worth tornado outbreak · Wikipedia · retrieved Supports: Climate hazards
- Weather and Climate Billion-Dollar Disasters to affect the U.S. from 1980-2024 (events list) · NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information · retrieved Supports: Climate hazards
- Flood Protection · Tarrant Regional Water District · retrieved Supports: Climate hazards
- Panther Island bypass project moves forward after Trinity River dams, flood storage delays · Fort Worth Report · retrieved Supports: Climate hazards, Character
- 'Boom, here we're hit with it again.' How historic rains flooded homes and neighborhoods across Tarrant County · Fort Worth Report · retrieved Supports: Climate hazards
- ACS 2024 1-year tables B08301 and B19013 for Fort Worth city, Tarrant County and the Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington MSA · Census Reporter API (US Census Bureau ACS) · retrieved Supports: Median household income, Transit commute share, Walk and cycle commute share, Character
- ACS 2024 1-year table B27001 (health insurance coverage) for the 50 states, DC, the US, Tarrant County, Fort Worth city and the Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington MSA · Census Reporter API (US Census Bureau ACS) · retrieved Supports: Health care, Character
- Local Area Unemployment Statistics, Fort Worth-Arlington-Grapevine, TX Metropolitan Division (LAUDV482310400000003), the Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington MSA (LAUMT481910000000003), Fort Worth city (LAUCT482700000000003), Tarrant County (LAUCN484390000000003) and the US rate (LNU04000000), not seasonally adjusted · US Bureau of Labor Statistics · retrieved Supports: Unemployment rate
- Current Employment Statistics, Fort Worth-Arlington-Grapevine, TX Metropolitan Division: total nonfarm (SMU48231040000000001, SMS48231040000000001), supersectors (SMU4823104xx00000001) and aerospace product and parts manufacturing (SMU48231043133640001) · US Bureau of Labor Statistics · retrieved Supports: Main sectors, Labour market
- Naval Air Station Joint Reserve Base Fort Worth (Texas military installations economic impact, 2025) · Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts · retrieved Supports: Main sectors, Labour market, Character
- AllianceTexas Drives $142.9 Billion in Economic Impact for North Texas · Hillwood · retrieved Supports: Main sectors, Labour market, Character
- United States Air Force Plant 4 (Lockheed Martin Aeronautics, F-35 production) · Wikipedia · retrieved Supports: Main sectors
- American Airlines (headquarters, DFW hub, employees) · Wikipedia · retrieved Supports: Main sectors, Labour market, Airport passengers
- BNSF Railway (headquarters, employees) · Wikipedia · retrieved Supports: Main sectors, Labour market
- Bell Textron (headquarters) · Wikipedia · retrieved Supports: Main sectors
- Special Purpose District Sales and Use Tax (Fort Worth Crime Control District, effective October 1, 1995) · Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts · retrieved Supports: Sales tax
- Fort Worth passes $4.35B budget and property tax rate increase · Community Impact · retrieved Supports: Tax notes, Character
- Slightly lower property tax bills part of Fort Worth's $3.33B budget for 2027, leaders say · CBS Texas · retrieved Supports: Tax notes
- Fort Worth proposes property tax rate bump, cost cuts to close $94M shortfall for 2027 · Fort Worth Report · retrieved Supports: Tax notes, Character
- Trinity Metro (service area, members, services, fleet, citing the APTA Transit Ridership Reports, Q4 2025 and Q2 2026) · Wikipedia · retrieved Supports: Transit system, Transit ridership
- TEXRail (length, stations, opening, frequency, ridership, Medical District extension) · Wikipedia · retrieved Supports: Transit system, Transit ridership, Airport passengers
- Template:American transit ridership (APTA Transit Ridership Reports, Q4 2025 and Q2 2026) · Wikipedia · retrieved Supports: Transit ridership
- DFW Total Passengers, December 2025 (calendar year 2025 vs 2024) · Dallas Fort Worth International Airport · retrieved Supports: Airport passengers
- Fort Worth Meacham International Airport (ownership, general aviation, history) · Wikipedia · retrieved Supports: Airport passengers, Climate normals
- A new era: JPS breaks ground on $1.5B hospital · Fort Worth Report · retrieved Supports: Health care
- JPS Health Network (Tarrant County Hospital District, John Peter Smith Hospital) · Wikipedia · retrieved Supports: Health care
- Cook Children's Medical Center · Wikipedia · retrieved Supports: Health care
- Texas Education Agency Appoints Board of Managers and Names New Superintendent to Lead Fort Worth ISD · Texas Education Agency · retrieved Supports: Education
- 'We failed our kids': New Fort Worth ISD board signals urgency as state takeover begins · Fort Worth Report · retrieved Supports: Education, Character
- As enrollment drops, FWISD to shift bilingual, special ed services closer to campuses · Fort Worth Report · retrieved Supports: Education, Character
- Fort Worth ISD board gives final approval to close 18 schools amid budget woes, enrollment decline · CBS Texas · retrieved Supports: Education
- Fort Worth, Texas (school districts serving the city, citing the 2020 Census school district reference map for Tarrant County; colleges and universities) · Wikipedia · retrieved Supports: Education
- Texas Christian University (fall 2025 enrollment, location, School of Medicine) · Wikipedia · retrieved Supports: Education, Health care
- August 2026 Central Texas housing report · Unlock MLS · retrieved Supports: A median residential sale price of $560,000 in the City of Austin in August 2026, down 4.3% from August 2025, 844 homes sold, down 10.3%, 4,554 active listings and 4.6 months of inventory in the City of Austin, No split of the city figures by property type
- Zillow Home Value Index, all homes, middle tier, smoothed and seasonally adjusted, by city · Zillow Research · retrieved Supports: A typical home value of $497,418 for the city of Austin (region 10221) in August 2026, $516,564 in August 2025, so a fall of 3.7% over the year
- Zillow Home Value Index, single-family and condominium series, by city · Zillow Research · retrieved Supports: A typical single-family value of $527,943 in the city of Austin in August 2026, against $546,174 a year earlier, down 3.3%, A typical condominium value of $355,596 in the same month, against $375,347, down 5.3%, from the condominium file at https://files.zillowstatic.com/research/public_csvs/zhvi/City_zhvi_uc_condo_tier_0.33_0.67_sm_sa_month.csv
- Austin, TX average rent and rent trends · RentCafe / Yardi Matrix · retrieved Supports: An average Austin apartment rent of $1,641, down 2.25% from $1,678 a year earlier, updated 31 August 2026, Average rents of $1,287 studio, $1,421 one-bedroom, $1,812 two-bedroom and $2,405 three-bedroom
- Zillow Observed Rent Index, all homes plus multifamily, smoothed, by city · Zillow Research · retrieved Supports: An observed rent index of $1,586 for the city of Austin in August 2026, down 0.31% from $1,591 a year earlier
- Tax rates and truth-in-taxation rate table, all taxing units · Travis County Tax Assessor-Collector · retrieved Supports: 2025 adopted rates per $100: Travis County 0.375845, City of Austin 0.524017, Austin ISD 0.9252, Austin Community College 0.1034, Travis County Healthcare District (Central Health) 0.118023, 2026 adopted rates for Travis County (0.386210), the City of Austin (0.579948), ACC (0.103643) and Central Health (0.132863), and no adopted 2026 rate yet for Austin ISD
- 2026 exemption listing, Travis County taxing units · Travis Central Appraisal District · retrieved Supports: A residence homestead exemption of $140,000 for Austin ISD, with no local option, Local option homestead exemptions of 20% with a $5,000 minimum for Travis County, the City of Austin and the Travis County Healthcare District, and 1% with a $5,000 minimum for Austin Community College, The same exemptions in the 2025 listing, dated 25 July 2025
- Property tax rates · City of Austin Budget Office · retrieved Supports: A fiscal 2026 rate of 0.524017 per $100, maintenance and operations 0.410282 and debt service 0.113735, A fiscal 2027 rate of 0.579948 per $100, adopted on 12 August 2026
- Ordinance No. 20251120-006, reducing the fiscal 2025-2026 tax rate to the voter-approval rate · City of Austin · retrieved Supports: The Council adopted a rate above the voter-approval rate on 13 August 2025, which triggered an automatic election, Proposition Q did not win a majority at the 4 November 2025 election, The rate reduced to the voter-approval rate of $0.524017 per $100 under Tax Code section 26.07(e), effective 1 December 2025
- Notice about tax year 2026 property tax rates and impact statement · Austin Independent School District · retrieved Supports: A 2025 rate of 0.9252 per $100, maintenance and operations 0.8022 and debt service 0.1230, A proposed 2026 rate of 0.9184, maintenance and operations 0.7954 and debt service 0.1230
- Austin ISD claims victory in tax rate election · KUT News · retrieved Supports: Austin ISD's Proposition A passed on 5 November 2024 with about 58% of the vote, raising the district's rate 9.1 cents, from 0.8595 to 0.9505 per $100
- Travis County Prop A, affordable child care passes with majority of vote in 2024 election, unofficial results show · Community Impact · retrieved Supports: Travis County's Proposition A, a tax rate increase of 2.5 cents per $100 to fund child care, passed on 5 November 2024 with 59.43% of the vote, 321,043 to 219,141
- Truth-in-taxation rate table, all Travis County taxing units, 2022 to 2026 · Travis County Tax Assessor-Collector · retrieved Supports: Travis Central Health: a 2026 total rate of 0.132863 per $100, maintenance and operations 0.123603 and debt service 0.00926, against a no-new-revenue rate of 0.118633 and a voter-approval rate of 0.135195; a 2025 total rate of 0.118023, Travis County: a 2024 total rate of 0.344445 per $100 against a voter-approval rate of 0.319445, the 2.5 cents voters approved, Austin ISD: total rates of 0.8595 for 2023 and 0.9505 for 2024, and for 2026 a no-new-revenue and voter-approval rate but no total rate
- ACC approves new property tax rate for fiscal year 2025-26 · Austin Community College District · retrieved Supports: A 2025 rate of 0.1034 per $100
- Central Health board approves fiscal year 2027 tax rate and budget · Central Health (Travis County Healthcare District) · retrieved Supports: The Board of Managers adopted the fiscal 2027 tax rate on Wednesday, 9 September 2026, in a release dated 10 September; the rate itself is in the county's rate table above
- Fiscal year 2027 tax rate impact statement · Travis County · retrieved Supports: A county tax of $1,653.72 in 2025 on a $550,000 homestead after the 20% exemption, the same arithmetic as here, The 2025 rate set with the disaster calculation after the July 2025 floods, which the county said would come out for fiscal 2027
- Valuing property: the homestead cap and the circuit breaker limitation · Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts · retrieved Supports: A residence homestead's appraised value may not rise more than 10% a year, from the year after the owner first qualifies, A 20% annual limit on the appraised value of non-homestead property valued at $5 million or less, the circuit breaker, which expires on 31 December 2026
- Tax Code, Section 41.44: notice of protest · Texas Legislature · retrieved Supports: A protest must be filed by 15 May or the 30th day after the appraisal notice is delivered, whichever is later
- 2025 annual report · Travis Central Appraisal District · retrieved Supports: 210,038 property value appeals filed in 2025, A districtwide single-family median level of appraisal of 1.00
- School district property value study, 2024 final findings, Austin ISD · Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts · retrieved Supports: Austin ISD's local value found within the confidence interval of the state's estimate, so the appraisal district's values stand as market value
- 2026 market values on their way · Travis Central Appraisal District · retrieved Supports: A median residence homestead market value of $493,449 in Travis County for 2026, against $519,677 in 2025
- Annexation · City of Austin Planning Department · retrieved Supports: The City collects no property tax in limited-purpose areas, On full-purpose annexation an area's emergency services district tax may be eliminated
- Senate Bill 2, 86th Legislature: the Texas Property Tax Reform and Transparency Act of 2019 · Texas Legislature Online · retrieved Supports: The enrolled bill summary names Senate Bill 2 of 2019, by Bettencourt et al., the Texas Property Tax Reform and Transparency Act of 2019, with provisions taking effect from 1 January 2020 to 1 January 2022
- Property tax process post-Senate Bill 2 (2019): explanatory Q&A · Texas Municipal League · retrieved Supports: S.B. 2 lowers the multiplier in a city's voter-approval rate from 8 percent to 3.5 percent more maintenance and operations revenue, for nearly every Texas city, A city that adopts a rate above the 3.5 percent voter-approval rate must hold an automatic election on the November uniform election date, where before voters had to petition for one
- Truth in taxation · Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts · retrieved Supports: The voter-approval rate gives taxing units other than school districts and special taxing units about the previous year's operating revenue plus an extra 3.5 percent
- Geologic wonders of Texas: Central Texas · Bureau of Economic Geology, The University of Texas at Austin · retrieved Supports: In Austin the Balcones escarpment generally parallels MoPac (Loop 1): west of it the city is hilly and east of it relatively flat, Hard Lower Cretaceous limestones and dolostones form the hills to the west, and younger Upper Cretaceous rocks including clays the flatter ground to the east
- Houston Black: Texas state soil · Soil Science Society of America, with USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service figures · retrieved Supports: Houston Black, a smectite clay that shrinks when dry and swells when wet, is found in the Blackland Prairie along the route of Interstate 35 from north of Dallas to just south of San Antonio, Construction on it is often plagued by cracking from the shrinking and swelling, and building foundations need reinforcing
- Floodplain management · City of Austin Watershed Protection Department · retrieved Supports: NOAA's Atlas 14 rainfall study of 2018 found Central Texas getting heavier rain than previously thought, and the City is updating its floodplain maps from it, In November 2019 the City based its development regulations on the current FEMA 500-year floodplain instead of the 100-year floodplain, pending completion of the updated maps; the maps are on ATXFloodPro
- Flood zones · Federal Emergency Management Agency · retrieved Supports: The Special Flood Hazard Area is the land flooded by the 1-percent-annual-chance flood, the base or 100-year flood; the ground between it and the 500-year flood is a moderate-risk zone
- Understanding flood risk: real estate, lending and insurance professionals · Federal Emergency Management Agency · retrieved Supports: Federally regulated or insured lenders must require flood insurance for every building in a Special Flood Hazard Area with a federally backed loan
- Primary Mortgage Market Survey, 24 September 2026 · Freddie Mac · retrieved Supports: A 30-year fixed-rate mortgage averaging 7.03%, up from 6.95% the week before and 6.30% a year earlier
- Texas homeowners insurance market overview · Texas Department of Insurance · retrieved Supports: A statewide average homeowners premium of $3,489 a year, from the Texas Statistical Plan for Residential Risks, Hail as the largest cause of paid homeowners losses in every year from 2016 to 2025 except 2021
- Texas homeowners insurance · NerdWallet · retrieved Supports: An average Austin premium of $4,250 a year and a Texas average of $5,910, for $500,000 of dwelling cover
- How much is homeowners insurance in Austin, TX? · Insure.com · retrieved Supports: An average Austin premium of $2,698 a year for $300,000 of dwelling cover, $100,000 of liability and a $1,000 deductible, updated 27 May 2026
- Renters insurance in Texas · NerdWallet · retrieved Supports: An average Austin renters premium of $136 a year for $30,000 of personal property
- Monthly homeowners' or condominium association fee, table B25143, 2024 American Community Survey 1-year estimates, Austin city · United States Census Bureau · retrieved Supports: A median monthly association fee of $76 among Austin owner-occupied units that pay one, 88,975 of 199,801 owner-occupied units, or 44.5%, paying such a fee, from table B25142
- City of Austin utility rates and fees, effective 1 July 2026 · City of Austin · retrieved Supports: A residential solid waste charge of $23.80 a month plus $4.70 to $40.30 by cart size, Clean Community fees of $5.45 and $4.80 a month, charged to every residential customer, A transportation user fee of $21.80 a month for a single-family home
- Homebuyer resources: Down Payment Assistance · City of Austin Housing Department · retrieved Supports: Up to $40,000 in assistance for first-time buyers at or below 80% of median family income, A sales price of no more than $440,000, on a home inside Austin's full-purpose city limits
- Conforming loan limit values for 2026, by county · Federal Housing Finance Agency · retrieved Supports: A baseline one-unit conforming loan limit of $832,750 for 2026, which is the limit in Travis County
- 2025 Gazetteer files: places, Texas · United States Census Bureau · retrieved Supports: A land area of 325.013 square miles for Austin city, against 319.937 in the 2020 file
- NTREIS monthly MLS summary report, August 2026 · North Texas Real Estate Information System and the Texas Real Estate Research Center at Texas A&M University, via the MetroTex Association of REALTORS · retrieved Supports: A median single-family sale price of $327,000 in the City of Fort Worth in August 2026 on 805 sales, against $330,000 on 884 sales in August 2025, and an average of $377,572, A median townhouse sale price of $365,000 on 20 sales, against $319,990 on 21, and a median condominium sale price of $330,000 on 16 sales, against $260,000 on 11, 3,086 active single-family listings and 3.6 months of inventory in the City of Fort Worth, A median single-family lease of $2,195 a month on 470 leases, against $2,150 on 453 a year earlier, A median single-family sale price of $343,000 in Tarrant County on 1,736 sales, and $352,250 in the Fort Worth-Arlington-Grapevine metropolitan division, City figures by property type only, with no all-types median; report produced 7 September 2026
- Housing market reports · MetroTex Association of REALTORS · retrieved Supports: Monthly reports featuring data from the Texas A&M Real Estate Research Center, based on listings of properties physically located within the specified geographic areas
- Fort Worth Rent Report, October 2026 · Apartment List · retrieved Supports: A median rent of $1,141 for a one-bedroom and $1,317 for a two-bedroom in the city of Fort Worth, and $1,336 across all bedroom sizes, Rents down 0.2% over September and down 1.7% over the past 12 months, against -2.1% for the state
- Apartments for rent in Fort Worth, TX: average rent · Apartment List · retrieved Supports: Average listed rents of $1,279 and up for a studio, $1,352 and up for one bedroom, $1,661 and up for two, and $2,066 and up for three or more
- FY 2026 fair market rents, Fort Worth-Arlington, TX HUD Metro FMR Area · United States Department of Housing and Urban Development · retrieved Supports: FY 2026 fair market rents of $1,473 for one bedroom, $1,723 for two and $2,273 for three, as gross rents including utilities, The FMR area as Johnson, Parker and Tarrant counties
- Rates and exemptions: 2025 tax rates per $100 valuation, and detail · Tarrant County Tax Assessor-Collector · retrieved Supports: 2025 rates per $100: Tarrant County 0.186200, City of Fort Worth 0.670000, Fort Worth ISD 1.029100, Keller ISD 1.085200, Tarrant County College 0.112280, JPS Health Network 0.165000, Tarrant Regional Water District 0.026500, Maintenance and debt splits: Tarrant County 0.173000 and 0.013200, City of Fort Worth 0.522500 and 0.147500, Fort Worth ISD 0.786900 and 0.242200, Keller ISD 0.755200 and 0.330000, Tarrant County College 0.096280 and 0.016000, JPS 0.155100 and 0.009900, water district 0.026500 and none, from https://entityportal.tarrantcountytx.gov/ratesExemptions.asp, Homestead exemptions of 20% (minimum $5,000) for Tarrant County, the City of Fort Worth and JPS Health Network, 1% (minimum $5,000) for Tarrant County College, none for the Tarrant Regional Water District, and $140,000 for Fort Worth ISD and Keller ISD, Eagle Mountain-Saginaw ISD at 1.245700, Crowley ISD at 1.255200 with a 10% local option, Emergency Service District 1 at 0.074348, Far North Fort Worth MUD at 1.000000 and Live Oak Creek MUD at 0.942000, Fort Worth public improvement district assessments per $100: PID 1 Downtown 0.125, PID 6 Park Glen 0.155 residential, PID 7 Heritage 0.145 residential, PID 11 Stockyards 0.12, PID 12 Chapel Hill 0.14, PID 14 Trinity Bluff 0.10, PID 15 Sun Valley 0.24, PID 19 Historic Camp Bowie 0.10, PID 20 East Lancaster Avenue 0.266, PID 21 Las Vegas Trail 0.10
- 2025 tax rates per $100 valuation for Tarrant County, last updated 8 October 2025 · Tarrant Appraisal District · retrieved Supports: The same 2025 rates and homestead exemptions for the county, the City, the hospital district, the college, the water district and every school district in the county, Northwest ISD at 1.0841 per $100 for 2025, No 2026 table yet: https://www.tad.org/content/rates/2026TaxRates.pdf returned not found, from https://www.tad.org/resources/rates
- Residential property data, 2026 appraisal roll · Tarrant Appraisal District · retrieved Supports: 255,731 single-family accounts inside the City of Fort Worth in Tarrant County, 121,356 of them in Fort Worth ISD, 33,569 in Eagle Mountain-Saginaw ISD and 32,861 in Keller ISD, 120,071 of the 121,356 City of Fort Worth and Fort Worth ISD single-family accounts carrying the Tarrant Regional Water District
- Tarrant water district lowers property tax rate, but cities will pay more for water use · Fort Worth Report · retrieved Supports: The water district's taxing district, established in 1949, is primarily in Fort Worth and funds operation and maintenance of the 27-mile Fort Worth Floodway
- 2020 block assignment files, Texas: unified school districts and places · United States Census Bureau · retrieved Supports: Read with the 2020 redistricting file's block populations, at https://www2.census.gov/programs-surveys/decennial/2020/data/01-Redistricting_File--PL_94-171/Texas/tx2020.pl.zip, and the district names in https://www2.census.gov/geo/docs/maps-data/data/gazetteer/2025_Gazetteer/2025_Gaz_unsd_national.zip, Of the City of Fort Worth's 918,915 residents in 2020: 473,224 in Fort Worth ISD, 119,281 in Keller ISD, 83,129 in Eagle Mountain-Saginaw ISD, 81,929 in Crowley ISD, 67,070 in Northwest ISD, 27,617 in Hurst-Euless-Bedford ISD, 17,470 in White Settlement ISD and 16,049 in Everman ISD, 473,224 of Fort Worth ISD's 519,747 residents inside the city
- Extraterritorial Jurisdiction (ETJ) · City of Fort Worth Development Services · retrieved Supports: The ETJ as the unincorporated land within five miles of the city limits, where the City can regulate some activities, Water control and improvement districts, fresh water supply districts and municipal utility districts in the ETJ, under the City's MUD policy of 2005
- Extraterritorial Jurisdiction (ETJ) layer, City of Fort Worth open data boundaries · City of Fort Worth · retrieved Supports: The ETJ's polygons summing to 164,965 acres, about 258 square miles, with the latest edit dated 1 September 2026
- Public Improvement Districts (PIDs) · City of Fort Worth · retrieved Supports: Fifteen districts listed: 1 Downtown, 6 Park Glen, 7 Heritage, 11 Stockyards, 12 Chapel Hill, 14 Trinity Bluff, 15 Sun Valley, 16 Walsh Ranch/Quail Valley, 17 Rock Creek Ranch, 18 Tourism, 19 Historic Camp Bowie, 20 East Lancaster Avenue, 21 Las Vegas Trail, 22 Veale Ranch and 23 Panther Island, PIDs 16 and 17, formed in 2016, supporting streets, drainage, water, sewer and other infrastructure; PID 22 Veale Ranch established in 2023 for a 60-year term; PID 23 established in 2026
- Fort Worth Public Improvement District No. 16 (Walsh Ranch/Quail Valley): annual service plan update, fiscal year 2027, 25 August 2026 · City of Fort Worth and MuniCap · retrieved Supports: Fiscal 2027 annual installments per lot in Improvement Area 1 of $482.14 for a 35-foot lot, $597.93 for 50 feet, $737.46 for 60 feet, $940.24 for 70 feet and $1,558.83 for a custom lot, Assessments bearing interest at the rate on the district's bonds, 4.63%, repaid over twenty annual installments, eighteen of them outstanding
- Central City · Tarrant Regional Water District · retrieved Supports: The rerouting of a section of the Trinity River due north of downtown, with flood water storage at Gateway Park, The Army Corps of Engineers building the bypass channel, three isolation gates, a dam, a pump station and ten flood water storage areas; the water district, the City and the state building the rest
- Army Corps awards contract for first half of major $1.2B Fort Worth flood control, development project · Tarrant Regional Water District, republishing WFAA of 24 September 2026 · retrieved Supports: A $169,431,703 contract with Walsh Construction Company for the north bypass channel, An 800-acre island, and 2,400 acres of land protected from flooding
- $403M coming to Panther Island · Tarrant Regional Water District, republishing the Fort Worth Star-Telegram of 19 January 2022 · retrieved Supports: A 1.5-mile bypass channel connecting the Clear and West Forks of the Trinity River north of downtown Fort Worth
- Gas Wells and Gas Compressor/Well Pad Sites layers, planning and development map service · City of Fort Worth · retrieved Supports: 2,351 gas wells, 1,955 of them producing, 287 abandoned, 84 water disposal, 13 permitted and 12 applying, in a layer last edited in December 2025, 529 gas compressor and well pad sites, from layer 9
- Gas well drilling · City of Fort Worth Development Services · retrieved Supports: The Barnett Shale as a natural gas reserve under a 15-county area, about 1.5 miles below the surface, No well drilled closer than 600 feet to a residence, religious institution, public building, hospital, school or public park without a waiver from the protected use owners or City Council approval
- Garbage service · City of Fort Worth Environmental Services · retrieved Supports: Monthly rates of $13.75, $19.50 and $25.75 for the 32-, 64- and 96-gallon garbage cart, shown as effective 1 January 2024, Solid waste fees billed on the Fort Worth water bill as a sanitation fee, with recycling and yard waste collected at no additional charge
- Stormwater utility fee · City of Fort Worth · retrieved Supports: Residential rates from 1 January 2026 of $3.65 a month up to 1,300 square feet of hard surface, $7.29 to 2,475, $10.94 to 3,394 and $14.58 above it, on the monthly water bill
- How much is homeowners insurance in Fort Worth, TX? · Insure.com · retrieved Supports: An average Fort Worth premium of $4,290 a year for $300,000 of dwelling cover, $100,000 of liability and a $1,000 deductible, updated 27 May 2026, An average of $3,342 a year for $200,000 of dwelling cover
- Monthly homeowners' association and condominium fee, tables B25142 and B25143, 2024 American Community Survey 1-year estimates, Fort Worth city · United States Census Bureau, via the Census Reporter API · retrieved Supports: A median monthly association fee of $55 among Fort Worth owner-occupied units that pay one, 85,299 of 210,450 owner-occupied units, or 40.5%, paying such a fee, and 7,153 paying $500 or more a month
- Homebuyer Assistance Program (HAP) · City of Fort Worth Neighborhood Services · retrieved Supports: Up to $25,000 of interest-free assistance toward the down payment and closing costs, as a forgivable loan: forgiven after ten years in the home, or after five on $14,999 or less, Income limits updated July 2026 of $61,800 for one person to $88,250 for four, First-time buyers, or anyone who has not owned a home in three years; an eight-hour homebuyer class; a contribution of $1,000 or 2% of the price, whichever is less; a home inside the city limits; a sales price no more than 95% of the area median, under the HOME rules