Dallas and Houston are interesting in that they have the high-paying CA-type jobs you refer to...but the housing costs of Kansas.
True, but I'm just reminded of horror stories from friends that moved to Houston. Houston apparently has a bit of a crime issue and they felt it wasn't a great town for their young children. They're back in Kansas now. He went a lil crazy at 30, decided to go back to law school. Now he's a small town lawyer and the wife takes care of kids.
As for the Big D a cousin of mine moved to Dallas, and it's basically California now, according to him. He rants about traffic from hell, millions of idiots moving in, buffoons running things.
He's still there, so it can't be all that bad..hehe.
Houston and Dallas seem like they are going the way of So Cal with urban sprawl, but I could be wrong. Recently I was looking at Plano, since there was a good job for me there but it seems like Dallas is spreading out all they way to Plano within a decade. A couple years ago we were looking at Corpus Christi, but my wife didn't like the likelihood of hurricanes. So Austin? San Antonio? I'm in high-tech so it seems there are some good companies in those areas. Anyone from Plano?