Moving to Waco: Pros, Cons & What to Know
Moving to Waco means moving to a real college town of roughly 146,000-149,000 people built around Baylor University, with a genuinely revitalized, tourism-driven downtown -- not a generic mid-size Texas city. It sits in McLennan County, along I-35 roughly halfway between Dallas-Fort Worth and Austin.
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Learn moreA college town with an outsized university relative to its size
Baylor University enrolls 20,626 students (14,915 undergraduate, 5,711 graduate) inside a city of roughly 146,000-149,000 residents (Baylor Institutional Research; WorldPopulationReview 2026). That's a large enough share to shape traffic patterns, rental demand near campus, and the local economy around the academic calendar in a way a similarly sized non-college city wouldn't experience.
I-35 corridor location -- roughly midway between Dallas-Fort Worth and Austin
Waco sits directly on I-35, making it a genuine midpoint stop between two of Texas's largest metros -- a real locational fact relevant to anyone weighing a move here against commuting to either metro (neither is a realistic daily commute from Waco, but both are within a comfortable weekend-trip distance).
A downtown that looks meaningfully different than it did a decade ago
Magnolia Market at the Silos, built by Chip and Joanna Gaines on the fame of HGTV's "Fixer Upper," turned downtown Waco into a real, sustained tourism destination starting in 2015-2016 -- Waco has averaged over two million visitors a year since, with 2018 alone drawing an estimated 2.7 million (Waco Tribune-Herald). Movers arriving today should expect a downtown with genuine restaurant, retail, and renovated-historic-building activity that didn't exist at this scale a decade ago, concentrated specifically in and around the Silo District.
Two hospital systems, not one, serve the city
Baylor Scott & White Hillcrest Medical Center and Ascension Providence Hospital both operate in Waco, each with specific U.S. News-recognized high-performing service lines, giving movers a choice of regional healthcare systems rather than a single-hospital-town situation (see healthcare-safety topic).
Key takeaways
- Waco is a genuine college town -- Baylor's 20,626 students inside a ~146K-149K-resident city meaningfully shape the local economy, rental market, and age profile (median age 29.7).
- Location directly on I-35, roughly midway between Dallas-Fort Worth and Austin, though neither is a realistic daily commute.
- Downtown Waco has been genuinely revitalized since 2015-2016, driven by Magnolia Market at the Silos, which has helped pull over 2 million visitors a year into the city's attractions.
- Two separate hospital systems (Baylor Scott & White Hillcrest, Ascension Providence) serve the city, each with specific nationally recognized service lines.
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