Living in El Paso Pros and Cons [2020]

Living in El Paso Pros and Cons [2020]

Hi, in this video we're going to talk all about the pros and cons of living in El Paso, Texas. I'm going to explain why I'm standing in front of a runoff canal, and make sure you stick around to the end when we're going to talk about a border town.

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So I've been talking to tons of people who are looking to relocate to El Paso. I love talking to all those people. I'm a real estate agent, so if you're considering moving to El Paso, Texas or West Texas, by all means please reach out to me by phone, send me a text, shoot me an email, and if

you're moving here, I've got your back. So first off, lots of things in life have kind of an upside and a downside. They aren't always black and white, and our pros and cons in this video are kind of the same way.

So the first one that we're going to talk about is rainfall. There's an upside to the limited amount of rain we have, and there's a downside. So the upside about getting about 10 inches annually of rain in El Paso is that that leaves plenty of sunshine to be had.

On average we have about 300 days a year of sunshine, which is fantastic. We do get enough rain that it doesn't feel like we're always living in some kind of drought condition. And the other nice thing about the rain that we do get is that it's not so much that it

creates a really humid environment for us. It's a nice dry air. Yes, of course it is hot in the summer, but it's not that kind of go outside and immediately start sweating hot.

It's a little bit of a drier air. So that part is, for us, a pro of the rain here. There are, however, some cons. So typically in June to September, people around here call that the monsoon season,

and we typically get about 5 inches of that 10 inches of rain during that time, basically in the summertime. However, in 2006 that changed, and El Paso recorded its wettest monsoon season ever. The airport recorded about 15 inches of rain, but more independent local observers some

places saw over 30 inches. And as you can see from the images, there was a lot of damage. Fortunately, nobody lost their lives. There were no serious injuries, but there were millions of dollars in damage.

As you can imagine, a lot of property was destroyed. People lost their homes if they didn't have flood insurance, and they were really in trouble. And so this was a pretty big, pretty epic problem at that time for the city. Now, some good did come out of that.

The city had to really confront these kind of chronic problems that they had been seeing before in the past, but they hadn't really done anything about. So this really made the city jump to it, and there have been a lot of infrastructure improvements. So at the beginning of the video, you saw me standing over by my house.

That's one of the runoff canals that was put into place so that when all that water falls onto the surface area of the mountains and starts going down the mountain, picking up steam, collecting all that debris, now we have all these runoff canals implemented throughout the city that channel that water into reservoir ponds, storage capacity tanks,

and the like. So that's helped considerably. In addition to that, they've installed a lot of water pumps, and they've installed what's behind me are these two reservoir water holding tanks near Interstate 10.

Before in the past, whenever there would be flooding, Interstate 10 was seemingly prone to a lot of that flooding, which as you can imagine shuts down transportation, creates a big mess. But now they've installed... this is one.

We are on the north side of Interstate 10, and there's another one on the other side of Interstate 10 connected by a tunnel. So a lot of these improvements have considerably made the situation much better. They've added 38 million gallons of holding capacity.

38 million gallons of water is like taking a football field, and if you put the walls around the football field up 12 stories high, that would be about 38 million gallons. So they have made it so also that they were able to take thousands of properties out of the floodplain zone, making it unnecessary for those homeowners to have to provide home

insurance for themselves. So there's our first pro and con about El Paso being the rain situation. Okay, our next pro and con has to do with our location. We are about as far west in Texas as you can go, and if you haven't driven through west

Texas, you may not understand that it is pretty isolated. So actually, we are pretty isolated out here in west Texas. We are actually closer to the state capitals of New Mexico, which is Santa Fe. You can see it up there at the top of the map, and we're closer to the capital of Arizona,

which is Phoenix, which you can see on the far left of the map. We're closer to those two state capitals than we are to the state capital of Texas, which is Austin, which you can see in the bottom right there. So we're pretty isolated.

So one of the cons of that is that you're not going to be doing a lot of day tripping, as in going to one location, hanging out for the day, experiencing this or that, and then driving home. About the only sort of mild mid-city size that you're going to do that is Las Cruces,

New Mexico, which is about 40 miles away, and we've gone there plenty of times. My wife goes there for work sometimes, and it's a lovely little town, but it's not huge. I'd call it a city. There's a college there, but it's definitely not the size of El Paso, or it's not like

just popping down to San Antonio and catching a music festival during the day and then driving back, because that's not really going to happen. So let me give you some of the distances here. Albuquerque, New Mexico, 270 miles away, about a four-hour drive.

Tucson, Arizona, about 320 miles, four and a half hours. Phoenix, Arizona is pretty cool, you can go there, but that's going to be about 400 miles and take you about six hours to get to. And now this is kind of funny, San Antonio, 550 miles, or eight hours.

Dallas, Houston, Austin are a little bit further than that. And actually, you can go to San Diego in about 10 and a half hours. It's about 725 miles or so. So we definitely are isolated.

And while that certainly doesn't bother me, and I'm going to tell you why I think it's kind of a pro, one thing that I have heard from people is that, well, that stinks because now everything that you need is getting trucked in. And that's pretty much true, but quite honestly, in our country, everything gets shipped in

everywhere. So I was a truck driver forever, I'm not just trying to spout off like I know everything. Most goods and services, food, all of that stuff gets transported into your city. And sure, there are some cities that are growing their own food, but the majority of the food

that's in the grocery stores is not being grown in your local community. So for what it's worth, like I said, I don't think it's that big of a deal for me. Could be for some people, which is why I'm telling you. But what's the upside of this?

For me, the upside is that everything we need is right here. So we create and foster this element of self-sufficiency because everything that we need, whether it's infrastructure, jobs, goods and services, it's all here in El Paso. And it actually draws, it attracts other companies.

Case in point, Amazon is now creating a distribution center in El Paso on the Far East side. So that's going to be 700 jobs right off the bat. It's a great location for Amazon because, like I said, since we are a bigger city here in this isolated location for Amazon, that's great because boom, distribution center.

So it makes a good point of departure and arrival for all the goods and services that need to move throughout this part of the country. So there's your upside and your downside about location isolation. Okay, so I hope you're finding some value here.

And if you are, I'd encourage you to click the like button below. Or if you have some ideas for other videos you'd like to see made, by all means, leave them in the comments for me. So the next pro and con we have of El Paso is the fact that we are a border city.

We share our border, as you probably know, with Ciudad Juarez. El Paso is on the United States side, Ciudad Juarez is on the Mexican side. And Ciudad Juarez is a city of about two and a half to three million, more or less. It's about two to three times bigger than El Paso.

So some of the pros of being a border city with Juarez are the following. One, and probably the biggest one, is that Juarez is a beautiful city with great people, amazing churches, cathedrals, plazas, markets, museums, parks, restaurants, bars, you name it.

There's so much to see and do over in Juarez. And we're going to talk about what that situation looks like for us right now. There's a lot of misconceptions and misunderstandings about Juarez. And the truth of the matter is, is that hundreds, if not thousands, of U.S. citizens, as well

as Mexican citizens, travel across this border every day to go to work, to go to school, to see family and friends, to reconnect with people that they haven't seen for a while. And it's really a cooperative and very pleasant situation for tons of people. Lots of people have a shared existence in our border town here.

I know one young woman who lives in Juarez. She's a nurse there, but she comes over to El Paso and I met her at a martial arts gym where she comes and she has a set of friends in the United States here in El Paso. And every day she goes back and forth.

She works in Juarez, lives in Juarez, but she comes over to El Paso to take advantage of things like the gym, probably shopping, different restaurants. And it's a two-way street. One of the first guys that I ever met actually in El Paso is a gentleman named Javier who

grew up in Juarez. He came to the United States, joined the military, was in the Marines for a long time. And he tells me stories all the time about how back in the day it was awesome. He would come back and forth all the time to see his family, to do shopping.

When he got married, he and his wife would go back and forth all the time to do some shopping, go out to dinner, connect with family. So there's a real cooperative and communal feel and most people are really excited and love the idea that we have this kind of multicultural existence here in El Paso and Juarez.

Now unfortunately, there is a downside and the con is that around 2007, competing cartels in Sinaloa and Juarez started battling and there was a terrible kind of turf war going on which has continued and that led to a huge increase in violence and this is what you've probably seen mostly on the news.

And it's absolutely true. Unfortunately for Juarez, they've been devastated by drug violence, the cartels, and I can't even imagine how unfortunate they must feel having lived in a great community and then to see their community essentially destroyed by violence.

So the con on this side is that we can't really go over as freely and experience all the great things that Juarez has like you probably used to. So I've probably mentioned this before, but my wife and I, we lived in Mexico for a year. We loved it.

We never had a single problem with anything as far as violence or anybody being off-putting or weird or aggressive to us. However, we haven't gone into Juarez because quite honestly, it's probably not the safest, most common sense thing for us to do.

We don't have great Spanish. We aren't familiar with the city of Juarez. My buddy Javier, he said, hey, I'll take you in because I know where to go and it'll be no problem, but it probably wouldn't be a good idea for me to just stroll in and prance

around like I own the place with what's happening. So unfortunately, that's the downside and we're all optimistic and hopeful that we can recreate this kind of communal existence and we can all go back and forth freely and enjoy our lives and take part in the different cultural experiences that both cities have to offer.

So in this video, we talked all about the pros and cons of living in El Paso, Texas. I'm sure there are more and I'm sure I'll create a couple more videos on this topic, especially as people reach out and have questions. And speaking of that, if you're thinking of moving here, the only way that I can help

you is if you reach out to me, call me, text me, email me. If you're relocating here, I'd love to help you on that journey and you're starting to see other videos pop up right now. If you're interested, you should check those out.

Consider subscribing to the channel and we'll see you next time.