By Jennifer Riner Trulia During tax season, maximizing tax refunds or minimizing taxes owed is on the minds of many. For homeowners, the mortgage interest deduction is a must-do, but fewer understand the tax benefits of sustainable home upgrades. Green home improvements deliver three-fold benefits. First, your household’s carbon footprint […]
From 2004 through 2011, residential customers in Austin annually tapped enough water for lawns and other outdoor irrigation to fill roughly 8,600 Olympic-size swimming pools. To be precise, that adds up to an annual average of 5,879,032,288 gallons, according to a study by the Texas Water Development Board. Drilling down […]
Bonnie Dilber has a new library in her neighborhood in Austin, TX. Actually, it’s in her front yard. LawnStarter recently set up a Little Free Library in front of Dilber’s home in South Austin. As the name implies, the library is little — roughly the size of a large birdhouse […]
If you’ve been bitten by the Pokémon GO bug, then no doubt you’ve been racing around Austin in a frenzied attempt to nab as many Pokémon characters as you can. The developer says this über-popular, location-based augmented reality game, available via app on iOS and Android devices, “allows you to find […]
Austin, TX, has loosened its water restrictions. On May 18, City Manager Marc Ott announced Austin now is in the “conservation” stage for water use, down from Stage 2. Austin had been under Stage 2 water restrictions for nearly four years. The city has five stages of water restrictions, with […]
Recently, the breakfast-taco brouhaha between the Texas cities of Austin and San Antonio got particularly heated. Now, we’ve got a blogger for The Huffington Post making a dubious claim: San Antonio is the “new Austin.” In a recent Huffington Post travel piece about San Antonio, blogger Sidonie Sawyer, who brands […]
LawnStarter is lending a hand to a special group of budding lawn care entrepreneurs in the Austin, TX, area. LawnStarter, which connects consumers with lawn care professionals, recently teamed up with Easter Seals Central Texas to help the charity ramp up its lawn care and landscaping venture. Easter Seals Lawn […]
If you’re a homeowner in the Austin, TX area, you might want to think twice about watering your lawn more than once a week. For homeowners within Austin’s city limits, once-a-week watering restrictions were imposed permanently in 2015. If, for instance, your watering day is Wednesday, you’re supposed to irrigate […]
The beauty of the trees throughout Austin, TX, is more than bark deep. “We recognize trees far beyond just their aesthetic beauty. We recognize all the benefits that they provide us, the services that they provide citizens,” Michael Embesi, manager of the City of Austin’s Community Tree Division, recently told […]
Brace yourselves, Austin, TX. The latest projection from the Texas state demographer indicates the population of the Austin metro area will sail past 3 million in 2045. But the City of Austin’s demographer, Ryan Robinson, predicts that milestone will happen about 15 years sooner. “I think we’ll bust through the […]