A San Francisco couple thought they got a deal of a lifetime when they placed a bid on a property right next to their home. They bid $25,000 on a roughly $1 million home at a tax collector’s auction and won. They didn’t realize what they actually bought was a dirt alley.

JJ Hollingsworth and her husband were not the proud owners of an alley behind their home. They thought they were buying the duplex next door, but it just ended up being the strip of dirt between the two homes.

They had been trying to get the city to rescind the deal and get their money back with no luck. Then she heard from a potential buyer.

“He wrote me a letter and said I’m interested in buying this parcel,” Hollingsworth said. “I’m an artist.”

She didn’t take the letter seriously at first, but then the buyer called, asking for a meeting.

“When he explained that he was going to paint a quilt in the alley, that’s when I melted,” she said.

Hollingsworth then got an attorney to help her through the process. She had the buyers checked out, knowing they had a checkered past.

“They were tech bro pranksters and that kind of raised a little question mark, too,” she said. “Oh gosh, is this another prank?”

So far, it appears to be the real deal.

Hollingsworth paid $25,000 for the alley and she sold it for $26,000. She also had the attorney put in provisions to make sure she and her neighbors still had access to the alley. After months of agony and regret, they were elated to get rid of the property.

“It’s a great relief, you know,” Alemayehu Mergia said. “We were counting the days.”

“We got up out of our chairs and screamed and shouted,” Hollingsworth said. “Opened a bottle of champagne and I don’t remember much after that.”

The property was even listed on Zillow as sold. A one-bed, one-bathroom, 850-square-foot property for $26,000. Hollingsworth knows she should’ve read the fine print, but says it was misleading to put the address of the duplex on the documents for the sale.

“I think the city needs to learn a lesson,” she said. “I learned mine. The city needs to learn a lesson. You can’t put something up for sale with the wrong address on it. That’s wrong. That’s wrong. I don’t care how you describe it, you can’t put the wrong address.”

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Pavi Theva, 31, a career coach who lives in Austin. The following has been edited for length and clarity.

The first time I visited San Francisco, I fell in love with it.

A year later, around June 2018, I went back for a work trip. From the Golden Gate Bridge to the coastal views, the city was stunning, and the hustle and bustle in the air made me feel like I’d never get bored there.

I started planning how I could work there one day. In October 2018, I left Dallas, where I was working at EY, to start an analytics role at a startup in San Francisco. Since then, life has taken me to Seattle and Austin, where I’ve been since August 2023.

I found Seattle underwhelming, but enjoyed the slower pace in Austin. Lately, I’ve been missing the ambitious, entrepreneurial spark you can only find in the Bay Area, and over five years after first moving away, I want to go back.

San Francisco was the complete package

When I moved to San Francisco, my rent rose drastically compared to $600 for a room in Dallas. I also noticed how the most common words I heard around San Francisco were the tech buzzwords “API” and “cloud,” whereas no one in Dallas really spoke about work after work. The pressure to stay on top of the latest technology and add to conversations at networking events meant I struggled with imposter syndrome.

But San Francisco felt like the complete package. It had nature, nightlife, a range of cuisines, and a strong focus on career growth.

There was also a large immigrant population, and it felt like everyone was from somewhere else, such as the Middle East or Asia. Growing up in India, I knew about the American dream and how diverse the US was, but San Francisco was the first place I felt like I was in the America I’d heard about.

In Austin, I could know someone for weeks and not know their profession

I didn’t want to leave California, but when I was offered a program manager role at Amazon in Seattle in 2019, I took it because the role aligned with my career goals, including working at a FAANG company.

My boyfriend and I shared an apartment that cost $1,990 a month, excluding utilities, which was cheaper than what I remember paying in San Francisco. But I found Seattle underwhelming and struggled with the gloomy weather and it getting dark by 4 o’clock. It’s hard to make friends in bad weather, when people don’t go out so much, and the 2020 pandemic made socializing even harder.

In 2022, after I kept bugging my partner, whom I met in San Francisco, to leave Seattle with me, we bought a property in Austin and moved in 2023, drawn to the lower cost of living and good weather.

We found a lot of young couples and a strong sense of community in Austin. It was easy to meet people because many residents had also moved from other cities.

For the first time, my environment wasn’t all about tech. I met small business owners who didn’t run startups, like people in the Indian community with jewellery and saree businesses. There was a lot of creative energy.

In the Bay Area and Seattle, the first or second question you asked in conversation was “What do you do?” but in Austin, I could know people for weeks without finding out their profession. People would talk about their hobbies and other aspects of life, which was a big culture shock.

I’d started a side hustle, creating social media content about career betterment, which was the beginning of my coaching business. Austin felt like a good place for me to create and grow the business. Compared to the Bay Area, where there’s so much competition, it was easier to become visible in Austin. I felt like a big fish in a small pond.

Austin is definitely in its acceleration phase, but I don’t think it’s the next Silicon Valley, like some are saying.

Some costs, like entertainment and food, feel comparable to Silicon Valley, but overall, Austin seems cheaper than San Francisco or Seattle did. Like Seattle, there’s no state income tax in Austin, so I’m saving more from my paycheck than I was in Silicon Valley, but as homeowners in Austin, we do have to pay quite high property taxes.

Austin’s missing a certain spark, and I want to go back to California

To me, the Bay Area, where there’s a deep engineering culture, is still the hub for entrepreneurship. Yes, companies like Tesla, Oracle, Apple, and Amazon have moved into or expanded in Austin, but I still don’t see as many people talking about technology, or as many tech conferences, as in Silicon Valley. It doesn’t feel like the city is ahead of the curve.

In November 2025, I went to a creator meet-up in the Bay Area, where I had lots of insightful conversations about business. I realized this was something I was missing out on, and it’s made me want to move back to San Francisco, ideally by 2027. I plan to continue career coaching, expand into corporate consulting, and take advantage of the opportunities in San Francisco.

I picked Austin because I was in a season of life when I wanted to slow down, but now, with my business in a more mature phase, I want to be surrounded by ambitious, driven people again to keep me accountable and inspired.

If you really want to grow, be challenged, and push yourself to be the smartest, that’s the energy of California — nothing can beat it.

Do you have a story to share about leaving Texas or California? Contact this reporter at ccheong@businessinsider.com

A fifth grader from San Francisco is representing the Bay Area on a global stage on Friday. 

Amy Colindres is competing in the annual 2026 MLB Players STEM League Global Championship in Miami, which is taking place at the same time as the World Baseball Classic.

At Junipero Serra Elementary, Colindres trained every Tuesday after school, playing in the MLB Players STEM League. The baseball-inspired game combines Colindres’ two favorite things: math and the San Francisco Giants. The game teaches fourth to eighth graders math skills, using real MLB player statistics. 

Colindres is an All-Star student, competing against students from around the nation and the world. The program initially launched in 2021, and this year features the largest number of countries represented in the competition to date, with students from the United States, Canada, Mexico, Dominican Republic, Colombia, Brazil, Japan, and South Korea.

“I feel, like, surprised, and I thought it was a dream, because I was, like, I hope I win, but I wasn’t that sure,” said Colindres.

Dorene Fontanilla, her after-school program leader with Bay Area Community Resources, was certainly sure about Amy, who wasn’t originally in her after-school program but really wanted to be a part of it. She became a standout student with her positive attitude, passion to learn, and dedication to teamwork, and Fontanilla quickly saw how Amy and her bright smile were an inspiring addition.

“I was telling my students that whoever shows good sportsmanship, teamwork, and overall enjoys the game, I will choose them in the championship in Miami,” said Fontanilla. “So she heard me, and she said, ‘I wanna do that, and I’m gonna ask.’ The next day, she comes to me and says, ‘I can do it. When can I play?’ I’m very proud of her. I love her excitement. I love her determination.”

“And then when I got picked, I was, like, I’m very happy that I could cry!” said Colindres.

Colindres says the program makes her feel smart and brave to try new things. Now what once felt like a dream is taking her all the way to the championship in Miami.

The nonprofit Learn Fresh created the MLB Players STEM League in partnership with the MLB Players Trust. Students receive an all-expenses-paid trip to participate in the tournament, and they also get to watch the World Baseball Classic in Miami.

The winner will be crowned on Saturday.