File the homestead exemption at closing. The Texas school district exemption rose to $140,000 for tax year 2025 after voters approved Proposition 13, and homeowners over 65 or disabled reach $200,000 with the additional exemption.

Filing also starts your 10 percent cap. Annual growth in a homestead's appraised value is limited to 10 percent plus new improvements under Tax Code 23.23, but the cap only begins January 1 following the year you first qualify. Your first assessment is uncapped, so protest it, because that protest sets the base every future increase builds on.

One honest note: appraisal protests are a normal annual chore in Texas, not an unusual event. You are moving to a lower rate, not to a state without a property tax conversation.

Property tax and housing, and that is still a real case. The property tax gap alone runs into thousands of dollars a year on a comparable home, and Illinois's rate applies to retirees exactly the same as to wage earners.

Estate planning is worth a look too. Illinois has an estate tax with a threshold well below the federal exemption. Texas does not. For estates in that range this can be a larger number than the annual tax difference.

Be sceptical of anyone who leads a retiree pitch with income tax. If they did not know about the Illinois retirement exemption, they have not done the work on your situation.

You are swapping a six-month winter for a three-month summer. June through September is genuinely hot and humid here and outdoor life shifts to mornings and evenings. Nearly every Chicago transplant describes that as an obviously good trade.

Take the ice seriously anyway. Infrastructure here is built for heat, not extended freezing, so a two-day ice event shuts the region down in a way that would embarrass Chicago. You will be better prepared than your neighbours.

What you actually lose is the shoulder seasons. Chicago's good weeks in May and October are very good. Texas has longer shoulder seasons but less crispness, and that is a real if minor concession.

DART's rail network is real but thin by Chicago standards, and it serves commuter corridors rather than dense neighbourhood-to-neighbourhood travel. The TRE line to Fort Worth and the Silver Line to DFW Airport are genuinely useful. The rest of your trips will be by car.

If transit is non-negotiable, Uptown, Deep Ellum, and the neighbourhoods along the rail spine are where to look, and you can run a one-car household there. Anywhere else, plan on two.

The upside is parking and the commute swing. You will not pay for a space, you will not shovel out, and a bad Texas commute is forty minutes rather than ninety.

Get a TollTag in your first week. I-PASS does not work here, and driving untagged means pay-by-mail rates that run meaningfully higher.

Dynamic pricing rises with congestion on the express lanes, which means the worst time to use them is exactly when you most want to.

Factor it into the suburb decision. Two neighbourhoods twenty minutes apart can differ by a hundred dollars a month depending on which corridor you use.

On a $500,000 home a one to two percent deductible is five to ten thousand dollars out of pocket before the policy pays on a hail claim. That is a genuinely different structure from a flat $1,000 deductible.

Roof age drives insurability. As roofs age, carriers may shift from replacement cost to actual cash value, which pays depreciated value rather than replacement cost. Ask the roof's age and last hail claim before you write an offer, and get a quote during the option period.

Budget for it as a known line item, not a surprise. It partially offsets the property tax saving, and you should see both numbers side by side before you decide.

Ask for the total tax rate, not the monthly payment. A builder quoting a payment may be using the current rate on unimproved land. Two homes at the same price in adjacent neighbourhoods can differ by hundreds a month on this line alone.

Most online mortgage calculators miss it entirely, which is exactly how an affordable new build becomes a payment you did not plan for.

It can erase your property tax advantage if you are careless. That is the specific risk for Illinois buyers, because you came here for a lower rate and a MUD can close a good part of that gap.

The pizza situation will annoy you for about a year. There are Chicago-style places in DFW and they are fine, and you will spend that year explaining why they are not the same. Then you will stop.

The sports transition is easier than the food one. DFW carries all four leagues, the Cowboys have the same civic gravity the Bears do, and nobody will mind a Cubs hat as long as you are not obnoxious about October.

What genuinely replaces it: a barbecue culture with real regional variation and an argument attached to it, which is the thing Chicago food culture actually gave you.

Fire ants are the daily adjustment if you have kids or dogs. Mounds appear fast after rain following a dry stretch and they are aggressive when disturbed.

The scorpion is painful, not dangerous. Comparable to a wasp for most people, though anyone with a known sting allergy should treat it seriously.

Regular pest control is standard here, not a sign of a problem. Quarterly exterior service handles most of it; monthly is common in newer construction on the edge of undeveloped land.

The commitment starts before school does. Moving in June or July with a participating kid means joining a schedule that is already set.

Restaurants empty out on Friday nights in the fall, whether or not you have a kid playing. It is the single clearest example of how differently a North Texas suburb organises itself.

For a transplant family this cuts both ways. It is either the fastest route into a new town or a season of feeling outside it, and which one you get depends almost entirely on whether you show up.

Your Texas driver's licence address must match the property. Appraisal districts reject applications where it does not, so the chain matters: register the vehicle first, then get the licence at the property address, then file the exemption.

This is what starts your 10 percent appraisal cap. You came here partly for the lower property tax rate, so the paperwork that protects it should not wait.

You file once. The exemption stays on the property as long as it is your principal residence, with no annual refiling.

Register the vehicle before you go to DPS. The licence application asks for proof of Texas registration, so the county tax office is your first stop. Getting this backwards costs an entire wasted morning.

Texas dropped the annual safety inspection for most non-commercial vehicles in January 2025, but emissions testing is still required in the most populous counties, which includes all of DFW.

Budget for the new resident fee. New residents pay a vehicle tax of $90 or the difference between the prior state's sales tax and the Texas rate, plus registration and title fees.