I live 35 mins from downtown yet it is rural as all fuck here. The neighbors' windows are about 70 feet from mine. I'm five mins from the expressway; the entrance to said expressway has three big box stores, one in each quadrant, and if I want to not deal with that I drive 10 mins the the grocery store which has a better meat department. 20 mins in the other direction I can go to an Amish butcher and get better food than you can anywhere outside of a good restaurant for about what you pay at the normal store. Yet, there is a thriving art scene, lots of culture philanthropy, a good symphony, two decent colleges, several hipster-style coffee chains, tons of restaurants, and they just announced we have an unemployment rate of about 5.5% and are worried that there are not enough people to hire in the skilled positions that need to be filled. According to the Census Tracts, I live in the City, and am technically in the suburbs. My mortgage is, including escrow (taxes and insurance) $502 a month. Car insurance is higher here do to weather being a factor, and some utilities out here are more than I expected, notably electric. I'm not going to see any art movies in a theater, nor are niche music acts going to play every year. But my quality of life is so much better than when I lived in California, the commute is easier, there are places to go and things to do, there are actual honest seasons out here. If I was not in the Ohio Valley, I'd be looking at Upstate New York as well, as upstate seems to be the exact same place I just described, only in New York and not the Ohio Valley. I hate to sound like a paid shrill, but my opinion is that the coasts and the "hot beds" are becoming over rated and are ready to peak, then burst hard. Paying $72,000 a year to rent a two bedroom apartment is not sustainable. My house may only go up in value 2-3% a year, but I'm also not going to crash 30% like my parents will when the SoCal real estate bubble pops. I'm hoping more young smart people move out here to the second and third tier cities to help push out some of the ancient old people who don't want to deal with the world changing around them. And two people earning $25,000 a year ($12-13 an hour) puts you in the $50K a year category, or in better terms, over the median household income for Kentucky. Remove NYC and that is roughly the median for Update New York as well. A couple can live very well out this way if they are willing to.
That sounds pretty great. Where I am in southern Wisconsin, prices for land are pretty high. Starting at Milwaukee, it's high because you're close to the city, then it stays high going west because you're either close to Milwaukee, close to Madison, or sort of close to both. Suburbs are expensive, too. The closest I've found to something I consider affordable is an older part of town that isn't close to downtown. If I stay in town, eventually I'll look for a house there. In my exploring in Upstate New York, I think once you're that far from the coast the prices stay low. In December I stayed a couple nights in Newcomb, New York. I think this was a former mining town, but I'm not really sure. It's pretty much just buildings along the two lane highway. There were some cross streets, but I don't think there were any streets paralleling the highway. There was no Verizon or AT&T mobile service, and there was just one restaurant twenty minutes away that was open midweek. There's another only fifteen minutes away that's open weekends. It's very affordable, but that's because the economy is so weak. So while you might be able to buy a little house on a couple acres of land for $70,000, it's really hard to find much for work. I look at it as a retirement goal before being a place to relocate to. The Ohio Valley, though, has more work opportunities for me. I've probably turned my nose up at it, but now I'm not sure why. Each year it feels like there's less holding me to Wisconsin.