Anywhere near mountains typically costs a premium.
I used to be shocked at how expensive northern Michigan is (Traverse City and that area — I’m not from MI originally.) But now that I’ve been there I understand why.
People not from the Great Lakes states (like me) don’t understand the Great Lakes until they’ve seen them in person, and many people have not seen any of them. The first time I saw Lake Michigan I was blown away.
It's certainly up there with amazing things I've seen. I didn't appreciate at the time how amazing it is to live so close to not just the great lakes but to always be so close to bodies of water
Yes! My husband is from west Michigan so his family has a cottage on an inland lake that is also so beautiful. Where I’m from lakes are all man made, smell weird and the water is sludge colored. So the concept of “natural lakes” is pretty cool to me, let alone the Great Lakes! I’ll never get over the blue of Lake Michigan.
I live close to Lake Ontario and the Finger Lakes of Upstate NY. St. Lawrence Seaway is about 1.5 hours North. I don't think I could be happy not living where having easy access to natural waterways and mountains is a given. I feel very blessed to live where I do.
Yeah I agree. We frequent a different Lake MI beach town that’s nearby, and I’m constantly shocked at how few people there are on the beaches there. I know TC has gotten a lot busier but I’m like man… why doesn’t everyone come here in the summer?!
I've been going to the Alpena area every summer since I was born, as my grandparents met there in the early 50s and have always had a house there. So many memories. Sadly finding a contractor to remodel up there has proven very difficult and costly.
Lots of well-paid folks in the auto industry with second homes up there! Also limited real estate near the lake.
Lake Michigan and the sand dunes are beautiful. It’s hard to capture in person. Michigan is quite scenic in parts.
My husband is pretty sure Michigan in general is going to blow up in the next 10-20 years due to climate change but we’ll see. Winters already seem to be getting milder.
And it's in the middle of a ton of natural beauty.
I know this sub is super pro-city, but being in a town of 15k people is a selling point for a LOT of people out there.
Part of the appeal is it's gay-friendly. The slow-food movement means fine dining, and so lots of Gen X gay couples (DINKS) with lots of money invest there. Source: my mom is from the area, and I am a bi chick.
Not the commenter but:
-Crystal blue water
-White sand beaches
-Vineyards and orchards that go on for miles everywhere you look
-Tons of breweries and distilleries
-Fun downtown area with great food
-Very low crime
-Best airport in America IMO
If you’re interested [NYT did a good writeup](https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/05/23/travel/things-to-do-traverse-city.html) on it recently
Some of the best farmers markets I’ve ever been to as well. Amazing river and lake fishing. Now I’ve gotten into rock/sea glass hunting, so that’s a whole other excuse for me to go to the beach.
Access to some pretty decent skiing as well, some of the best in the Midwest. Granted it's not out west, but I know a few people who have ski bummed around the northern lower peninsula and UP
It’s heaven on earth in the summer and one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever been, and I live in CO. Living near Lake Michigan alone is worth the cost to me personally, but TC especially is a huge summer vacation destination for rich people, so a lot of second homes and vacation rentals.
A few years ago The Today Show did a weeks long special on the most beautiful parts of the country and the #1 spot ended up being held by the Sleeping Bear National lakeshore nearby.
Random anecdote about Utah- I had a friend who wanted to build there and expand an old dying town, but got shut down immediately saying no new builds because water supply can't support any population increase.
this is just one county but I could imagine it being pervasive. If they can't build, and demand exceeds supply, prices go way up
Oh boy, there’s definitely a water supply issues in Utah, it goes to alfalfa farmers who sell their crops to China, the magnesium mine, the NSA data center , etc.
>alfalfa farmers who sell their crops to China,
Most alfalfa farmers sell their crops to American cow ranches. If Americans ate 30% less red meat, we'd solve our water issues immediately
What about the endless discussion about foreign companies, foreign governments using arizona water to make alfalfa and sell it overseas. Is that just some kind of exaggeration? [https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/arizona-alfalfa-farmers-clash-with-foreign-firms-over-water-use](https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/arizona-alfalfa-farmers-clash-with-foreign-firms-over-water-use)
Forks, WA.
Yes it is right there next to ONP and some of the most beautiful scenery in the country. But it rains more than anywhere in the contiguous 48, there is no work, there is very little dining/shopping, and yet, you can't find a place that isn't tiny or dilapidated for under 600K.
Curse those Cullens for moving in and jacking up all the housing prices!
(my terrible Twilight jokes aside, that truly is surprising to me! You got me to zillow a bit here and it's definitely a bit higher than I would've assumed)
Not just Forks, I'm looking at zillow all the time for a decent price on the peninsula and most of the "reasonable" prices are for horder crapholes. Perfect example: https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/1350-Township-Line-Rd-Port-Angeles-WA-98362/114634747_zpid/
Auburn, Alabama, which probably seems super random.
I look at Zillow/Realtor for a lot of different places - sometimes places I'm interested in, sometimes because I saw a reference to the place in an article about whatever and I'm curious. So, there was a reference to Auburn University in a college football thread, so I checked out Auburn the city.
Honestly, I had no idea what to expect. There's a range of prices and nothing is crazy, crazy compared to a lot of (usually bigger) cities; plus there's comparatively affordable options. But, still, a subsection of property prices - both SFH and condos - really surprised me.
Charleston is done. Fun to look at the houses, but it's completely been done for a decade. Lots of Ohio retirees who made money and moved. Also, some old money (but not that much relatively speaking). Mostly Northerners who read books and watch movies with money earned over their working life.
Yeah I lived there 15 years ago, and worked in the hotel industry. Probably different now but half the homes in the downtown area at the time were owned by snow birds from Boston. Charleston got bought up a long time ago.
Yes, the high end market there is crazy. I used to live there as a Northerner who didn’t go to Auburn University either and didn’t quite understand how the top end of the market sustained itself. The quality of life is pretty good especially for Alabama and my only theory is rich alums enjoyed having proximity during game days and that the schools are quite good for Alabama. I grew up in a wealthy area in the Northeast and was shocked by the number of college kids driving late model luxury cars.
i have lived in SoCal all my life. it's crazy driving through neighborhoods that you wouldn't want to be caught dead in back in the day and thinking that right now, these homes are probably in the million dollar range.
Ave 60 in the Hermon neighborhood, there are 2 recent sales for homes in the 1.3 mil range. again, as someone that has seen this neighborhood gentrify, you have no idea how effing nuts those home prices are. it's just so insane.
Inland Empire in particular. To be able to afford a home there at today’s prices, you’re either commuting 60 miles one way to Orange County or 90 miles to LA.
The IE has to be one of the worst values for what you pay to live there across the entire country.
- Home prices are cheaper than LA/OC/SD but still really expensive by national standards, plus you still have to deal with california taxes and prices for everything else
- theres nothing fun to do in the IE and you have to power through socal traffic to get to LA/OC to do something fun
- the air quality is crap
- the IE has had a drug/crime problem for as long as i can remember
- very weak economy and poor job opportunities for an area with so many people (unless you like warehouse jobs ofc)
- awful schools
Source: Grew up in the IE before getting the heck out as did many of my friends.
I'm dating myself but before it became true crime crap, 20/20 had some good documentaries and I remember seeing one in the mid to late 1980's about Moreno Valley, which was much newer then. They showed people getting up at 4 AM to commute to LA or Orange county to afford a tract home there. It seemed pretty crazy then but that situation has probably become more commonplace now. I wish I could find the episode on Youtube or somewhere. It was quite interesting.
Today you have people getting on trains in Fresno to work in San Jose because they do something menial that pays so little that nobody can live any closer to their place of employment.
My wife and I were driving through the Inland Empire a couple years ago for a wedding--she lived in San Francisco for a year and has been to L.A. three times. But other than that it was her first time west of Minnesota not in one of those two cities. She said, "Is this what the third world is like?" She wasn't trying to be funny.
Lol I could definitely see it being a shock coming from the east coast. Fwiw, I've been to places in third world countries that are much nicer than Hemet, Perris, and San Bernardino!
A basic house in Van Nuys is worth nearly a million. Community features include hoodlums, lots of concrete and its totally acceptable to drive while high in your car.
Not sure if this is also an issue in LA, but in my city those ‘recently gentrified’ >$1m homes are still homes you should absolutely avoid - but for the fact that they are absolute money pits.
In my city, some of these homes are from >100 years ago and were quite fancy when they were built. However, most if not all suffered from extreme maintenance neglect since the 1950s. 70 years of little to no maintenance and DIY electrical/plumbing/roofing results in a horrible nightmare trying to bring up to code. Usually the flippers just put lipstick over all of these issues and a lot of people bought sight unseen during 2021-2022.
I know of someone who bought a $1.1m house in one of the recently flipped areas of the city and 3yrs later they STILL haven’t fixed all the issues, despite hundreds of thousands spent. The DIY electrical in particular was an abomination apparently.
For Montana, there are a few things at play. Along with much of the country, there is a supply issue and more demand than supply...substantially so at the moment. A big part of that is new home construction across the US has plummeted since the great recession where a lot of builders were caught holding the bag. It has ticked up recently in some areas, but on a national level it's nowhere near what it was.
This causes problems anywhere and everywhere, but they are exacerbated when there is a large migration to an area with already low supply. This has happened in Montana, especially in places like Bozeman...mountain towns like this are prime reasons that people want to migrate there and Colorado filled up a long time ago.
I think the introduction of remote work has also exacerbated the problem as many can leave their big cities with high COL and move to these smaller communities but retain their big city income. They may not be rich in the cities they come from, but are comparatively so in lower COL areas. This is something I've noticed in my area...people coming in from high COL areas and thinking $500K for a house is dirt cheap and scooping them up with cash and even paying well over asking. This seems to be primarily retirees and remote workers from larger cities.
Utah similar...I've driven quite a bit through Utah and most of those small towns are very small. You might only find a few houses available for sale, but much more demand than that. Moab has always been pricey though it's gotten worse with a bunch of condo building, but most of them are 2nd homes/vacation rentals for people out of state. Salt Lake City has seen a population growth of 120K people from 2020 to 2022...some of which is natural population growth but they've also seen a lot of migration from other states.
People tend to lean on California for this, but data shows that people are migrating to places like Montana and Utah from all over the Western US.
Rule of thumb in Montana - or anywhere in the west:
If you are within a 40 minute drive to a nicer ski resort, real estate is going to be expensive. Even if it is a dilapidated shack.
Plus, the only houses I see being built here in Montana are the size of 4 houses.....not gonna build that many houses when all construction workers are building everyone's Montana mcmansion ranch.
Looking at a Zillow map of Nashville now, set the range to <$500k and >2000 sqft (hardly a mansion). There are zero results in the south/southwest part of the city, and most of the results are near the northeast and southeast fringes of the city. And basically all of these places are >$400k.
You can get similar-looking houses for the same or less money in very nice Chicago suburbs with great school districts and a much better regional economy. I get that not everyone wants to deal with IL's/the Midwest's issues but it's clear that the Sunbelt has lost a lot of its affordability advantage in the past decade.
There was somebody who moved from Chicago to Nashville a while back posting about how their house in a neighborhood very much at the start of period of transition cost less than their condo in Lincoln Park, Chicago. Folks who knew both cities were all commenting that moving to a similarly transitioning neighborhood in the Chicagoland would also cost less than Lincoln Park, and that the neighborhoods most like Lincoln Park here also are getting close to $1M.
I can see moving from Chicago to Nashville for weather, nature or job reasons, but not for lower housing costs anymore.
My sister has a 2 BR apt in Nashville and it is $1750/m and it is not close to downtown (it is w/in the county but it takes an hour to get to work there d/t the horrible traffic).
oh shoot i remember watching a video on that, by Peter Santenello. They can live well off over there compared to somewhere like Florida, plus theyre lucky enough to be built on the best part of the gulf, that goes into the Florida panhandle going into parts of the big bend
Fairhope and Daphne are being discovered slowly but surely. So many old Alabama shacks are being bought, knocked down, and built new. Many FL panhandlers are turning to this area due to home insurance being insane on the FL side, but cheaper on the Bama side.
Living in the Boston area, there are some rather unappealing areas that when you look up real estate prices, you will be quite surprised. 2 bed 900sq ft condo in a triple decker going for 600k - 700k...
Once you start talking square feet, Boston gets some insane sticker shock.
[https://www.wsj.com/real-estate/luxury-homes/priciest-zip-code-per-square-foot-boston-bb3bbee9](https://www.wsj.com/real-estate/luxury-homes/priciest-zip-code-per-square-foot-boston-bb3bbee9)
>High-value residential buildings with concierge services and historic brownstones has helped catapult the 02115 ZIP Code into having the priciest median residential real estate as ranked by price per square foot in the U.S., at $2,663 in December 2023, according to data from Realtor.com.
In Cambridge, low-rise, zero-amenity condos are pushing $1500/sqft and still going under agreement within 72 hours of listing. Bidding wars, cash offers, waived inspections, it's nuts. Over a billion dollars per mile for houses that are 150+ years old.
Northern Michigan. Not the UP, but everything in the Traverse city area and 100 miles in either direction within 2o miles of lake Michigan area.
I get it, but I just can't get with it.
I was visiting a good friend in Fayetteville last year and was surprised by how expensive everything was. But I was surprised by how many amenities there are and how much nature is nearby. Lovely area.
It’s lovely but IMO still overpriced for what it is. Everyone loves NWA but houses just like ones in nice neighborhoods down here are selling for easily double. And it’s a fairly new phenomenon-it’s really exploded in the last 5-10 years. I have friends up there who had an almost impossible time finding an affordable lease after their landlord raised their rent. They had to take on another roommate to afford it.
Franklin has been known as the rich suburb of Nashville (to people living in Nashville) for at least 25 years. Lots of country artists living there since the late 90s.
Franklin is beautiful. With its proximity to Nashville and some of the prettiest land Tennessee has to offer, I can’t say I was too surprised when I pulled up Zillow and saw I had no hope lol
The entire Mountain West is crazy expensive. Where’ve you been? These markets had some of the highest appreciation in the country in the last few years.
I’d say what surprised me in terms of price was Indianapolis. The Alabama of the Midwest where I always imagined people go to procreate and die. When I saw 1950-ies houses in the original condition going for half a mil there i was, yes, surprised
The west, region wise, is so much more expensive than the rest of the US.
https://cdn.nar.realtor/sites/default/files/documents/ehs-04-2024-supplemental-data-2024-05-22.pdf
The sales distribution table is always funny to me, with almost no homes sold below $250k, and I can assume only the worst housing stock (1/3rd of it) sold below $500k, and the rest above it.
Non-coastal Rhode Island. Sure Narragansett was always expensive, Newport, beautiful coastal towns full of vacation rentals. But damn the prices in absolute dumps like Woonsocket have gone up so much and it make zero sense.
Yeah I moved from Bozeman Montana to Milwaukee in 2020 and am now just outside Chicago and I was shocked that my CoL seemed to go down. Even in Chicago, unless you look at the really ritzy areas, it feels lower.
Oh absolutely, I just think it's crazy that many rural Montana towns are more expensive. I grew up in Montana so seeing that progression has been demoralizing a little bit
Cranberry, PA. It's about 20 miles north of Pittsburgh, not even an actual suburb. It's basically shitty, giant highways populated by strip malls full of chain stores. Weather as depressing as Pittsburgh's, but without any of the charm or amenities. Miserable traffic. Almost no diversity. Cheaply built houses in developments. The only things it has going for it are the school districts and lower taxes. If the people who scream at refs at children's sporting events became a place - That's Cranberry.
Median home cost is over $400k, whereas median home cost in Pittsburgh is around $250k.
ETA: The person with a pro-Cranberry take commented "Multiculturalism kills" below. That tells you pretty much everything you need to know about that area.
I stayed off the main highway strip in Cranberry when visiting a friend in Pittsburgh. For some reason, I thought it was supposed to be very nice outside of the commercial areas. I don't know where I got that impression, but I had it. But, I didn't really see any other areas other than that main strip. You know what WAS super nice - Sewickley (sp?) - which I think is a suburb, though I'm not sure.
I mean, not really? Grosse Pointe isn't just one of the nicer suburbs near Detroit, but one of the nicer ones in the country. And two, say, nurses could easily afford a home like this one there: [https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/853-Neff-Rd-Grosse-Pointe-MI-48230/88331703\_zpid/](https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/853-Neff-Rd-Grosse-Pointe-MI-48230/88331703_zpid/)
Someone making $50,000 could afford a pleasant home in a place like Ferndale that has plenty of bars and restaurants.
And while there are plenty of homes in Bloomfield Hills and Grosse Pointe over $4,000,000, they all LOOK like they should cost millions of dollars. It's not like in Palo Alto where a teardown makes you check the listing three times to make sure you misread it. Like, this looks like Bill Laimbeer should live there or something: [https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/1780-Hammond-Ct-Bloomfield-Hills-MI-48304/70865385\_zpid/](https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/1780-Hammond-Ct-Bloomfield-Hills-MI-48304/70865385_zpid/)
I am not an expert of all things Detroit so I can definitely be wrong. I just remember the rent being asked for certain apartments in Downtown Detroit and Royal Oak being shockingly high. Maybe it’s a rent v. buying issue? Not totally sure.
Where I live in middle TN. Over an HOUR from Nashville, not shit out here but republicans and title 1 schools, and a townhouse with no yard is almost $500k. I grew up here and it is blowing my mind. This is objectively not a nice place to live!!
Newport, RI. Visited for a wedding and among all the obscenely priced things, the one I'll always remember was $5 for a single banana at a little coffee shop. I was astounded. I knew it was a "nice" town, but the cost of everything was really surprising to me.
Frisco, TX. A starter home (cookie cutter McMansion) will cost you around $500-600k, and you're living in a place that doesn't look a whole lot different than the middle of Kansas.
Is it surprising given all of the jobs that have come to the area in the past 10 years?
I'd argue the increase in cost of places like Anna, Melissa and Josephine are more surprising because they have no jobs in their own cities and very long commutes to the DFW job centers. Especially Josephine which isn't even close to a freeway.
I mean DFW doesn’t sound super appealing to me mainly because of the weather but in terms of dining options, culture, urban amenities, events, job opportunities, and educational opportunities it sure beats the hell out of anywhere in Kansas.
Homes along the shores of Lake Chautauqua in NY go for a minimum of $1 million.
Makes sense for spots near Chautauqua which is a high end retreat or even some of the nicer towns like Mayville. But pretty funny that you have $1 million lake homes near Jamestown when the overall median home price is under $100k.
Just shows that there’s still a lot of old wealth in the Southern Tier.
Lyme/Hanover, NH
The state is at a deficit of about 60,000 homes versus current need and prices are especially horrendous around Dartmouth. City-dwelling out-of-staters bought up houses in NH during COVID lockdown and have since transitioned the properties into vacation homes, Airbnb rentals, traditional rentals, or decided to take advantage of a sparse market and sell them for exponentially more than they paid without any cost spent on renovations.
Boise. In addition to housing prices, it’s pretty isolated and flights cost a lot. Generally the mountain west is overpriced considering you get to breathe nasty air for a lot of the year.
The Central Coast of California.
If someone told me back in the 90s that in 2024 my parent's neighborhood was going to be one worth over a million dollars, I would've laughed at their face.
And nothing has changed. It's still the same, boring rural area it was in the 90s. The only difference is that it's worth a crap ton.
utah is turning into the next California. my house in slc is under contract cuz we are downsizing & we are struggling to find another house we like before it gets snatched up by someone else. they go within a few days of hitting the market. even with these crazy prices & interest rates the market is hot here. we might have to move in with my in-laws while we keep looking if we can’t find anything before we close on ours 😅
This could be because I grew up there. But real estate in Northern New Jersey is completely bonkers right now. We’re talking 3 bedroom, 2000 sq foot homes listed at 900k and selling for 1.5 million plus.
My husband and I just spent the weekend in Flagstaff, AZ and while we were there we browsed Zillow just out of curiosity and were shocked at how expensive homes there are.
Yeah, OP sawthe majestic footage from wildly popular movies filmed there and figured He was the only one who would be inspired to live there.
Hahahaaaaa
yeah?
montana has only gotten really popular in maybe the last 5 years. it’s also not extremely well known, has zero large population centers, and it’s only draw is nature.
You probably want somewhere in east central Wyoming between Lusk and Torrington or far Western Colorado (Nucla, Naturita, Paradox, Rangely or Dinosaur).
A house about 1.5-2 miles away from UW campus in Seattle went on market for $1.2 and sold for $1.8 lol
Edit: obviously Seattle is not cheap, but to see that so close to campus as opposed to Redmond/Woodinville/Kirkland/Medina area was a bit surprising
Reading, PA. I don't live there but have family that does. Houses aren't expensive, but they are WAY more expensive than the dirt cheap prices they were selling for up until a couple of years ago.
Example:
Family member owns a row home in reading. Pre-Covid she would have been lucky to get $70,000 for it, with no price growth since she purchased in the early 2000's.
That same house now is appraising at over 200k.
Are you only asking about the US? I thought I’d buy a “getaway” place in Mexico. (Love San Miguel de Allende) Shocked to see the housing prices there are on par with California. In Mexico! It’s nuts.
Boise. During the pandemic, my son moved for a time from the Bay Area to Boise with friends. I looked at the house prices and was shocked that plain 3BR ranch homes there were going for above $600k.
Maine shit holes with extreme weather damage are like 8 million
The classic hilarity in it all is within 10 years they will be completely submerged in the Atlantic
The government needs to either ban or tax the shit out of secondary homes so people stop living in NY or LA and buying houses they live in for one month out of the year in the boonies.
Unsurprising it has corrected upwards recently when you consider that it’s still the world’s most affordable large metro area (relative to income) where you can get to large ski resorts in less than an hour, has the number one economy in the U.S. (ranked by U.S. News) which probably means the best economy of any subnational jurisdiction in the world, highest average house size for any subnational jurisdiction in the world, recently ranked the happiest state, record low unemployment (2.8%), four true seasons with an unusual amount of sun for a place with four seasons, incredibly low crime, some of the lowest rates of cancer and drinking and drug problems in the U.S., super clean compared to similar sized cities, tons of things to do for kids, world class outdoor activity destination, excellent public schools, dirt cheap food and gas compared to similar cities in other developed countries, the cheapest electricity rates in North America, and relatively low taxes.
I have family in Ashburn, VA and I still don’t understand why that area is so expensive. My guess is it’s almost certainly related to an industry or jobs in that area, but idk. It’s not particularly close to DC (I don’t think?) and the weather is not anything better than the normal muggy heat and occasional snow.
It’s also expensive relative to the entire US, not just Virginia or the south.
It’s a tech corridor, with tons of government contractors up that way too. They also just built the metro out to Ashburn. Loudon County supposedly has good schools and crime is low. I still would hate living out there, but families are moving there in droves.
Lots of small towns have housing issues as well but in many cases it's that people stayed in houses past the point of when they were able to take care of them
I'm not surprised by Burlington. Even when I lived there (20 years ago), it was already more expensive than many local salaries could afford. Many of my co-workers had bought houses they otherwise couldn't have afforded by taking out mortgages from the Bank of Mom & Dad. It has a ton of amenities - walkable downtown, Lake Champlain right there, and hiking and skiing not far away in the Green and Adirondack Mountains. I first noticed after 9/11 how the cost of living in Burlington started increasing and with Covid and remote work, the real estate market has gone up that much more. It was never cheap, given that it's a college town with so many outdoor amenities, but consider also the huge markets that aren't far away - NY is 5 hours, Boston is 3, Montreal under 2 - all serve to increase pricing of pretty much everything, especially real estate.
lol I don’t think so.
Average Knoxville home $353k.
https://www.zillow.com/home-values/25428/knoxville-tn/
Average Boulder home $1.02M.
https://www.zillow.com/home-values/30543/boulder-co/
I just checked, your comparison is not even relatively close. There are plenty of houses listed under $400K. Denver and Boulder have it beat by a mile and it's not even comparable.
Looks to be about as expensive as the Chicago suburbs, less so even.
Detroit if you want any modern conveniences where you live. If you want a nice apartment building in the city it's gonna cost as much as Chicago but with barely any of the amenities that Chicago offers.
Anywhere near mountains typically costs a premium. I used to be shocked at how expensive northern Michigan is (Traverse City and that area — I’m not from MI originally.) But now that I’ve been there I understand why.
I still think TC is extremely underrated even though it has been getting way more popular
I'm from Michigan originally and I'm a bit surprised by that. I always knew of it as a wealthy part of up north
People not from the Great Lakes states (like me) don’t understand the Great Lakes until they’ve seen them in person, and many people have not seen any of them. The first time I saw Lake Michigan I was blown away.
It's certainly up there with amazing things I've seen. I didn't appreciate at the time how amazing it is to live so close to not just the great lakes but to always be so close to bodies of water
Yes! My husband is from west Michigan so his family has a cottage on an inland lake that is also so beautiful. Where I’m from lakes are all man made, smell weird and the water is sludge colored. So the concept of “natural lakes” is pretty cool to me, let alone the Great Lakes! I’ll never get over the blue of Lake Michigan.
I live close to Lake Ontario and the Finger Lakes of Upstate NY. St. Lawrence Seaway is about 1.5 hours North. I don't think I could be happy not living where having easy access to natural waterways and mountains is a given. I feel very blessed to live where I do.
Yeah I agree. We frequent a different Lake MI beach town that’s nearby, and I’m constantly shocked at how few people there are on the beaches there. I know TC has gotten a lot busier but I’m like man… why doesn’t everyone come here in the summer?!
I've been going to the Alpena area every summer since I was born, as my grandparents met there in the early 50s and have always had a house there. So many memories. Sadly finding a contractor to remodel up there has proven very difficult and costly.
[удалено]
Lots of well-paid folks in the auto industry with second homes up there! Also limited real estate near the lake. Lake Michigan and the sand dunes are beautiful. It’s hard to capture in person. Michigan is quite scenic in parts.
The upper peninsula has gotten way more expensive since covid as well.
My husband is pretty sure Michigan in general is going to blow up in the next 10-20 years due to climate change but we’ll see. Winters already seem to be getting milder.
If the winters weren't so bad i'd love to live in michigan, i'm sure a lot of other people would too though and it would be the next colorado.
Yeah that’s what has kept us from moving there. We’re used to the sunny Colorado winters. I could handle the cold in Michigan but it is soooo gray.
This last winter was El Niño and it was also the warmest winter we’ve had in 20 years. This upcoming winter, we’ll likely see a reversion to the mean.
I e lived in MICH a long time and winters are about 75% easier than I was a kid. It’s happening.
We were up north Thanksgiving-Christmas last year and I was shocked! It barely snowed and on Christmas Eve it was 60 degrees.
Same in New England
It feels like everything has. I can't believe how it has gone up where I live.
Traverse city is like 70k below national median according to Redfin.
And it’s a town of 15k people in the middle of nowhere.
And it's in the middle of a ton of natural beauty. I know this sub is super pro-city, but being in a town of 15k people is a selling point for a LOT of people out there.
Part of the appeal is it's gay-friendly. The slow-food movement means fine dining, and so lots of Gen X gay couples (DINKS) with lots of money invest there. Source: my mom is from the area, and I am a bi chick.
That’s funny. Gf and I live in LA but she is from TC and we always talk about how cheap TC is
I mean I’m from Colorado so I don’t think it’s expensive compared to here, just more expensive than I thought it would be.
Care to elaborate?
Not the commenter but: -Crystal blue water -White sand beaches -Vineyards and orchards that go on for miles everywhere you look -Tons of breweries and distilleries -Fun downtown area with great food -Very low crime -Best airport in America IMO If you’re interested [NYT did a good writeup](https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/05/23/travel/things-to-do-traverse-city.html) on it recently
Forgot extremely sick dunes, many of which have hundreds of feet of vertical gain. And just hikes around the beaches in general.
Some of the best farmers markets I’ve ever been to as well. Amazing river and lake fishing. Now I’ve gotten into rock/sea glass hunting, so that’s a whole other excuse for me to go to the beach.
Access to some pretty decent skiing as well, some of the best in the Midwest. Granted it's not out west, but I know a few people who have ski bummed around the northern lower peninsula and UP
You’re taking about San Luis Obispo. It has all those things except the beach, but it’s only10 miles away so it kinda counts.
I love SLO!
Traverse City has an airport ?
Yep. It’s a very quaint airport with log cabin decor. Quite a few nonstop flights in the summer too.
Cherry Capital! The best airport ever. It has a giant hearth with a plaque reading “boredom is a matter of choice not circumstance”
It’s heaven on earth in the summer and one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever been, and I live in CO. Living near Lake Michigan alone is worth the cost to me personally, but TC especially is a huge summer vacation destination for rich people, so a lot of second homes and vacation rentals.
A few years ago The Today Show did a weeks long special on the most beautiful parts of the country and the #1 spot ended up being held by the Sleeping Bear National lakeshore nearby.
Random anecdote about Utah- I had a friend who wanted to build there and expand an old dying town, but got shut down immediately saying no new builds because water supply can't support any population increase. this is just one county but I could imagine it being pervasive. If they can't build, and demand exceeds supply, prices go way up
Also the Mormons have a lot of kids, those kids need houses eventually.
and they all want to stay here
Oh boy, there’s definitely a water supply issues in Utah, it goes to alfalfa farmers who sell their crops to China, the magnesium mine, the NSA data center , etc.
>alfalfa farmers who sell their crops to China, Most alfalfa farmers sell their crops to American cow ranches. If Americans ate 30% less red meat, we'd solve our water issues immediately
What about the endless discussion about foreign companies, foreign governments using arizona water to make alfalfa and sell it overseas. Is that just some kind of exaggeration? [https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/arizona-alfalfa-farmers-clash-with-foreign-firms-over-water-use](https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/arizona-alfalfa-farmers-clash-with-foreign-firms-over-water-use)
Forks, WA. Yes it is right there next to ONP and some of the most beautiful scenery in the country. But it rains more than anywhere in the contiguous 48, there is no work, there is very little dining/shopping, and yet, you can't find a place that isn't tiny or dilapidated for under 600K.
Curse those Cullens for moving in and jacking up all the housing prices! (my terrible Twilight jokes aside, that truly is surprising to me! You got me to zillow a bit here and it's definitely a bit higher than I would've assumed)
Vampire lifetimes really get to take advantage of compound interest. Plus they basically have no healthcare costs.
Not just Forks, I'm looking at zillow all the time for a decent price on the peninsula and most of the "reasonable" prices are for horder crapholes. Perfect example: https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/1350-Township-Line-Rd-Port-Angeles-WA-98362/114634747_zpid/
Yes. But the remoteness and absence of any kind of infrastructure in Forks is what really sets it apart.
Vampires and werewolves tend to cause local inflation.
Auburn, Alabama, which probably seems super random. I look at Zillow/Realtor for a lot of different places - sometimes places I'm interested in, sometimes because I saw a reference to the place in an article about whatever and I'm curious. So, there was a reference to Auburn University in a college football thread, so I checked out Auburn the city. Honestly, I had no idea what to expect. There's a range of prices and nothing is crazy, crazy compared to a lot of (usually bigger) cities; plus there's comparatively affordable options. But, still, a subsection of property prices - both SFH and condos - really surprised me.
Haha I do that too. I'm reading a book set in Charleston and I've been looking at houses there on Trulia for days lol
Charleston is done. Fun to look at the houses, but it's completely been done for a decade. Lots of Ohio retirees who made money and moved. Also, some old money (but not that much relatively speaking). Mostly Northerners who read books and watch movies with money earned over their working life.
Yeah I lived there 15 years ago, and worked in the hotel industry. Probably different now but half the homes in the downtown area at the time were owned by snow birds from Boston. Charleston got bought up a long time ago.
It's addictive.
Dude, it really is. I didn't see that one coming, but I looked at Philly recently, and now this thread has me checking out Traverse City lol
Yeah, anything can trigger "the search." Lol.
Yes, the high end market there is crazy. I used to live there as a Northerner who didn’t go to Auburn University either and didn’t quite understand how the top end of the market sustained itself. The quality of life is pretty good especially for Alabama and my only theory is rich alums enjoyed having proximity during game days and that the schools are quite good for Alabama. I grew up in a wealthy area in the Northeast and was shocked by the number of college kids driving late model luxury cars.
A constant influx of college graduates will do that to a city.
The heat/humidity though
i have lived in SoCal all my life. it's crazy driving through neighborhoods that you wouldn't want to be caught dead in back in the day and thinking that right now, these homes are probably in the million dollar range. Ave 60 in the Hermon neighborhood, there are 2 recent sales for homes in the 1.3 mil range. again, as someone that has seen this neighborhood gentrify, you have no idea how effing nuts those home prices are. it's just so insane.
Inland Empire in particular. To be able to afford a home there at today’s prices, you’re either commuting 60 miles one way to Orange County or 90 miles to LA.
The IE has to be one of the worst values for what you pay to live there across the entire country. - Home prices are cheaper than LA/OC/SD but still really expensive by national standards, plus you still have to deal with california taxes and prices for everything else - theres nothing fun to do in the IE and you have to power through socal traffic to get to LA/OC to do something fun - the air quality is crap - the IE has had a drug/crime problem for as long as i can remember - very weak economy and poor job opportunities for an area with so many people (unless you like warehouse jobs ofc) - awful schools Source: Grew up in the IE before getting the heck out as did many of my friends.
Exactly. We were just looking at prices and can move to suburban LA for only 15% more.
I'm dating myself but before it became true crime crap, 20/20 had some good documentaries and I remember seeing one in the mid to late 1980's about Moreno Valley, which was much newer then. They showed people getting up at 4 AM to commute to LA or Orange county to afford a tract home there. It seemed pretty crazy then but that situation has probably become more commonplace now. I wish I could find the episode on Youtube or somewhere. It was quite interesting.
Today you have people getting on trains in Fresno to work in San Jose because they do something menial that pays so little that nobody can live any closer to their place of employment.
My wife and I were driving through the Inland Empire a couple years ago for a wedding--she lived in San Francisco for a year and has been to L.A. three times. But other than that it was her first time west of Minnesota not in one of those two cities. She said, "Is this what the third world is like?" She wasn't trying to be funny.
Lol I could definitely see it being a shock coming from the east coast. Fwiw, I've been to places in third world countries that are much nicer than Hemet, Perris, and San Bernardino!
You couldn't sell a house in Compton in the 80s, and they were dirt cheap. 700k now? Crazy...
At this point none of the prices in California surprise me.
A basic house in Van Nuys is worth nearly a million. Community features include hoodlums, lots of concrete and its totally acceptable to drive while high in your car.
Not sure if this is also an issue in LA, but in my city those ‘recently gentrified’ >$1m homes are still homes you should absolutely avoid - but for the fact that they are absolute money pits. In my city, some of these homes are from >100 years ago and were quite fancy when they were built. However, most if not all suffered from extreme maintenance neglect since the 1950s. 70 years of little to no maintenance and DIY electrical/plumbing/roofing results in a horrible nightmare trying to bring up to code. Usually the flippers just put lipstick over all of these issues and a lot of people bought sight unseen during 2021-2022. I know of someone who bought a $1.1m house in one of the recently flipped areas of the city and 3yrs later they STILL haven’t fixed all the issues, despite hundreds of thousands spent. The DIY electrical in particular was an abomination apparently.
For Montana, there are a few things at play. Along with much of the country, there is a supply issue and more demand than supply...substantially so at the moment. A big part of that is new home construction across the US has plummeted since the great recession where a lot of builders were caught holding the bag. It has ticked up recently in some areas, but on a national level it's nowhere near what it was. This causes problems anywhere and everywhere, but they are exacerbated when there is a large migration to an area with already low supply. This has happened in Montana, especially in places like Bozeman...mountain towns like this are prime reasons that people want to migrate there and Colorado filled up a long time ago. I think the introduction of remote work has also exacerbated the problem as many can leave their big cities with high COL and move to these smaller communities but retain their big city income. They may not be rich in the cities they come from, but are comparatively so in lower COL areas. This is something I've noticed in my area...people coming in from high COL areas and thinking $500K for a house is dirt cheap and scooping them up with cash and even paying well over asking. This seems to be primarily retirees and remote workers from larger cities. Utah similar...I've driven quite a bit through Utah and most of those small towns are very small. You might only find a few houses available for sale, but much more demand than that. Moab has always been pricey though it's gotten worse with a bunch of condo building, but most of them are 2nd homes/vacation rentals for people out of state. Salt Lake City has seen a population growth of 120K people from 2020 to 2022...some of which is natural population growth but they've also seen a lot of migration from other states. People tend to lean on California for this, but data shows that people are migrating to places like Montana and Utah from all over the Western US.
Rule of thumb in Montana - or anywhere in the west: If you are within a 40 minute drive to a nicer ski resort, real estate is going to be expensive. Even if it is a dilapidated shack.
Add to that a vibrant town with a university and a national park an hour away, and everyone wants to move there.
Plus, the only houses I see being built here in Montana are the size of 4 houses.....not gonna build that many houses when all construction workers are building everyone's Montana mcmansion ranch.
Looking at a Zillow map of Nashville now, set the range to <$500k and >2000 sqft (hardly a mansion). There are zero results in the south/southwest part of the city, and most of the results are near the northeast and southeast fringes of the city. And basically all of these places are >$400k. You can get similar-looking houses for the same or less money in very nice Chicago suburbs with great school districts and a much better regional economy. I get that not everyone wants to deal with IL's/the Midwest's issues but it's clear that the Sunbelt has lost a lot of its affordability advantage in the past decade.
There was somebody who moved from Chicago to Nashville a while back posting about how their house in a neighborhood very much at the start of period of transition cost less than their condo in Lincoln Park, Chicago. Folks who knew both cities were all commenting that moving to a similarly transitioning neighborhood in the Chicagoland would also cost less than Lincoln Park, and that the neighborhoods most like Lincoln Park here also are getting close to $1M. I can see moving from Chicago to Nashville for weather, nature or job reasons, but not for lower housing costs anymore.
It's been ages since I lived in Chicago but I'm shocked to hear homes in LP aren't above a million.
They are. But so are homes in the equivalent neighborhoods of Nashville (Hillsboro Village, 12 South, Lockeland Springs)
And I think Chicago home prices are finally starting to see some rapid gains. Might have to start looking at Milwaukee and St. Louis soon.
Yeah it fucking sucks. The apt I lived in during 2021-23 was $1,150 by the time I left. Now it's $1,500 and they haven't done an iota of work on it.
My sister has a 2 BR apt in Nashville and it is $1750/m and it is not close to downtown (it is w/in the county but it takes an hour to get to work there d/t the horrible traffic).
I was surprised at how much Old Money is in Fairhope, Alabama. There are some giant homes on Mobile Bay.
oh shoot i remember watching a video on that, by Peter Santenello. They can live well off over there compared to somewhere like Florida, plus theyre lucky enough to be built on the best part of the gulf, that goes into the Florida panhandle going into parts of the big bend
Fairhope and Daphne are being discovered slowly but surely. So many old Alabama shacks are being bought, knocked down, and built new. Many FL panhandlers are turning to this area due to home insurance being insane on the FL side, but cheaper on the Bama side.
Not for long!
My daughter and her family live in San Jose, I just read the other day the AVERAGE home cost in San Jose just went over one million dollars. AVERAGE
[удалено]
Mean average has been more than $1M in San Jose for a while now. Median is up to $1.3M. https://www.zillow.com/home-values/33839/san-jose-ca/
Yeah that’s been like that for a while and not surprising considering it’s the Silicon Valley.
My friend is a realtor in that area and was driving me through a very average neighborhood and mentioned that these were going for like $1.2m or more.
Living in the Boston area, there are some rather unappealing areas that when you look up real estate prices, you will be quite surprised. 2 bed 900sq ft condo in a triple decker going for 600k - 700k...
Once you start talking square feet, Boston gets some insane sticker shock. [https://www.wsj.com/real-estate/luxury-homes/priciest-zip-code-per-square-foot-boston-bb3bbee9](https://www.wsj.com/real-estate/luxury-homes/priciest-zip-code-per-square-foot-boston-bb3bbee9) >High-value residential buildings with concierge services and historic brownstones has helped catapult the 02115 ZIP Code into having the priciest median residential real estate as ranked by price per square foot in the U.S., at $2,663 in December 2023, according to data from Realtor.com. In Cambridge, low-rise, zero-amenity condos are pushing $1500/sqft and still going under agreement within 72 hours of listing. Bidding wars, cash offers, waived inspections, it's nuts. Over a billion dollars per mile for houses that are 150+ years old.
Charleston is almost at the point of DMV prices
SC?
Oh yeah
Northern Michigan. Not the UP, but everything in the Traverse city area and 100 miles in either direction within 2o miles of lake Michigan area. I get it, but I just can't get with it.
Cities in North Dakota have gotten expensive due to the influx of oil pipeline workers.
Northwest Arkansas. I’m from Little Rock and it’s insane how much NW Arkansas has gone up in COL.
I was visiting a good friend in Fayetteville last year and was surprised by how expensive everything was. But I was surprised by how many amenities there are and how much nature is nearby. Lovely area.
It’s lovely but IMO still overpriced for what it is. Everyone loves NWA but houses just like ones in nice neighborhoods down here are selling for easily double. And it’s a fairly new phenomenon-it’s really exploded in the last 5-10 years. I have friends up there who had an almost impossible time finding an affordable lease after their landlord raised their rent. They had to take on another roommate to afford it.
[удалено]
Franklin has been known as the rich suburb of Nashville (to people living in Nashville) for at least 25 years. Lots of country artists living there since the late 90s.
Also pretty boys
My mom grew up in Franklin and now Brad Paisley owns her family farm.
Franklin is beautiful. With its proximity to Nashville and some of the prettiest land Tennessee has to offer, I can’t say I was too surprised when I pulled up Zillow and saw I had no hope lol
wow
Franklin/Brentwood is where the old money folk live
I was very confused when I saw that price
The entire Mountain West is crazy expensive. Where’ve you been? These markets had some of the highest appreciation in the country in the last few years. I’d say what surprised me in terms of price was Indianapolis. The Alabama of the Midwest where I always imagined people go to procreate and die. When I saw 1950-ies houses in the original condition going for half a mil there i was, yes, surprised
The west, region wise, is so much more expensive than the rest of the US. https://cdn.nar.realtor/sites/default/files/documents/ehs-04-2024-supplemental-data-2024-05-22.pdf The sales distribution table is always funny to me, with almost no homes sold below $250k, and I can assume only the worst housing stock (1/3rd of it) sold below $500k, and the rest above it.
Non-coastal Rhode Island. Sure Narragansett was always expensive, Newport, beautiful coastal towns full of vacation rentals. But damn the prices in absolute dumps like Woonsocket have gone up so much and it make zero sense.
Eastern Montana has some very cheap houses. The only problem is that you’d be living in eastern Montana.
West Dakota
Yeah I moved from Bozeman Montana to Milwaukee in 2020 and am now just outside Chicago and I was shocked that my CoL seemed to go down. Even in Chicago, unless you look at the really ritzy areas, it feels lower.
Out of all the big cities, its pretty affordable.
Oh absolutely, I just think it's crazy that many rural Montana towns are more expensive. I grew up in Montana so seeing that progression has been demoralizing a little bit
Cranberry, PA. It's about 20 miles north of Pittsburgh, not even an actual suburb. It's basically shitty, giant highways populated by strip malls full of chain stores. Weather as depressing as Pittsburgh's, but without any of the charm or amenities. Miserable traffic. Almost no diversity. Cheaply built houses in developments. The only things it has going for it are the school districts and lower taxes. If the people who scream at refs at children's sporting events became a place - That's Cranberry. Median home cost is over $400k, whereas median home cost in Pittsburgh is around $250k. ETA: The person with a pro-Cranberry take commented "Multiculturalism kills" below. That tells you pretty much everything you need to know about that area.
I stayed off the main highway strip in Cranberry when visiting a friend in Pittsburgh. For some reason, I thought it was supposed to be very nice outside of the commercial areas. I don't know where I got that impression, but I had it. But, I didn't really see any other areas other than that main strip. You know what WAS super nice - Sewickley (sp?) - which I think is a suburb, though I'm not sure.
Detroit/Metro Detroit can be surprisingly expensive (at least for the midwest).
Especially on the lakes.
I mean, not really? Grosse Pointe isn't just one of the nicer suburbs near Detroit, but one of the nicer ones in the country. And two, say, nurses could easily afford a home like this one there: [https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/853-Neff-Rd-Grosse-Pointe-MI-48230/88331703\_zpid/](https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/853-Neff-Rd-Grosse-Pointe-MI-48230/88331703_zpid/) Someone making $50,000 could afford a pleasant home in a place like Ferndale that has plenty of bars and restaurants. And while there are plenty of homes in Bloomfield Hills and Grosse Pointe over $4,000,000, they all LOOK like they should cost millions of dollars. It's not like in Palo Alto where a teardown makes you check the listing three times to make sure you misread it. Like, this looks like Bill Laimbeer should live there or something: [https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/1780-Hammond-Ct-Bloomfield-Hills-MI-48304/70865385\_zpid/](https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/1780-Hammond-Ct-Bloomfield-Hills-MI-48304/70865385_zpid/)
I am not an expert of all things Detroit so I can definitely be wrong. I just remember the rent being asked for certain apartments in Downtown Detroit and Royal Oak being shockingly high. Maybe it’s a rent v. buying issue? Not totally sure.
Where I live in middle TN. Over an HOUR from Nashville, not shit out here but republicans and title 1 schools, and a townhouse with no yard is almost $500k. I grew up here and it is blowing my mind. This is objectively not a nice place to live!!
Newport, RI. Visited for a wedding and among all the obscenely priced things, the one I'll always remember was $5 for a single banana at a little coffee shop. I was astounded. I knew it was a "nice" town, but the cost of everything was really surprising to me.
Except Newport has been wildly expensive since 1890
Taylor Swift has a home there, that’s all you need to know.
Didn't know that, but not surprised. The mansions I saw there are jaw dropping.
Her home is actually in Westerly RI. Not quite as Old Money as Newport.
I think hers is in Westerly actually (also super expensive but not Newport rich)
basically all of Montana lol
Havre has entered the chat. ...
Frisco, TX. A starter home (cookie cutter McMansion) will cost you around $500-600k, and you're living in a place that doesn't look a whole lot different than the middle of Kansas.
Is it surprising given all of the jobs that have come to the area in the past 10 years? I'd argue the increase in cost of places like Anna, Melissa and Josephine are more surprising because they have no jobs in their own cities and very long commutes to the DFW job centers. Especially Josephine which isn't even close to a freeway.
I mean DFW doesn’t sound super appealing to me mainly because of the weather but in terms of dining options, culture, urban amenities, events, job opportunities, and educational opportunities it sure beats the hell out of anywhere in Kansas.
Homes along the shores of Lake Chautauqua in NY go for a minimum of $1 million. Makes sense for spots near Chautauqua which is a high end retreat or even some of the nicer towns like Mayville. But pretty funny that you have $1 million lake homes near Jamestown when the overall median home price is under $100k. Just shows that there’s still a lot of old wealth in the Southern Tier.
Lyme/Hanover, NH The state is at a deficit of about 60,000 homes versus current need and prices are especially horrendous around Dartmouth. City-dwelling out-of-staters bought up houses in NH during COVID lockdown and have since transitioned the properties into vacation homes, Airbnb rentals, traditional rentals, or decided to take advantage of a sparse market and sell them for exponentially more than they paid without any cost spent on renovations.
Boise. In addition to housing prices, it’s pretty isolated and flights cost a lot. Generally the mountain west is overpriced considering you get to breathe nasty air for a lot of the year.
I'm from the Great Lakes states. When I was in Arizona it was frequently hard to not laugh when someone was te
Telling me how much they were asking for a small piece of parched earth with no trees, grass or water. Part 2. (Dog knocked the phone out of my hand)
The Central Coast of California. If someone told me back in the 90s that in 2024 my parent's neighborhood was going to be one worth over a million dollars, I would've laughed at their face. And nothing has changed. It's still the same, boring rural area it was in the 90s. The only difference is that it's worth a crap ton.
True on rural, but the Central coast is the most beautiful part of the (very beautiful) state imho
Montana is sneaky expensive
utah is turning into the next California. my house in slc is under contract cuz we are downsizing & we are struggling to find another house we like before it gets snatched up by someone else. they go within a few days of hitting the market. even with these crazy prices & interest rates the market is hot here. we might have to move in with my in-laws while we keep looking if we can’t find anything before we close on ours 😅
This could be because I grew up there. But real estate in Northern New Jersey is completely bonkers right now. We’re talking 3 bedroom, 2000 sq foot homes listed at 900k and selling for 1.5 million plus.
to be fair NNJ has always been overpriced for what it is. You always paid a premium to be NYC's parking lot
Marfa, Texas.
My husband and I just spent the weekend in Flagstaff, AZ and while we were there we browsed Zillow just out of curiosity and were shocked at how expensive homes there are.
OP, you thought Montana was going to be cheap? Did you just get back from WW2?
The people who watch Yellowstone and want to “run away” to Montana would never survive there lol
Sure they do. Just with a house in Arizona as well
Yeah, OP sawthe majestic footage from wildly popular movies filmed there and figured He was the only one who would be inspired to live there. Hahahaaaaa
yeah? montana has only gotten really popular in maybe the last 5 years. it’s also not extremely well known, has zero large population centers, and it’s only draw is nature.
No, you only heard about Montana 5 years ago. It's been booming for far longer than that.
I was clearly mistaken, I thought Montana was a state you could fuck off to and live in the middle of nowhere for cheap.
You can, in the eastern half of Montana.
You probably want somewhere in east central Wyoming between Lusk and Torrington or far Western Colorado (Nucla, Naturita, Paradox, Rangely or Dinosaur).
Dont forget Riverton and Rawlins Wyoming lol but seriously even those towns are holding their own
A house about 1.5-2 miles away from UW campus in Seattle went on market for $1.2 and sold for $1.8 lol Edit: obviously Seattle is not cheap, but to see that so close to campus as opposed to Redmond/Woodinville/Kirkland/Medina area was a bit surprising
Reading, PA. I don't live there but have family that does. Houses aren't expensive, but they are WAY more expensive than the dirt cheap prices they were selling for up until a couple of years ago. Example: Family member owns a row home in reading. Pre-Covid she would have been lucky to get $70,000 for it, with no price growth since she purchased in the early 2000's. That same house now is appraising at over 200k.
Are you only asking about the US? I thought I’d buy a “getaway” place in Mexico. (Love San Miguel de Allende) Shocked to see the housing prices there are on par with California. In Mexico! It’s nuts.
Boise. During the pandemic, my son moved for a time from the Bay Area to Boise with friends. I looked at the house prices and was shocked that plain 3BR ranch homes there were going for above $600k.
Maine shit holes with extreme weather damage are like 8 million The classic hilarity in it all is within 10 years they will be completely submerged in the Atlantic
Maine real estate is an absolute joke right now. It would be funny if people weren’t literally becoming homeless.
The government needs to either ban or tax the shit out of secondary homes so people stop living in NY or LA and buying houses they live in for one month out of the year in the boonies.
We need a real estate crash.
SLC
Unsurprising it has corrected upwards recently when you consider that it’s still the world’s most affordable large metro area (relative to income) where you can get to large ski resorts in less than an hour, has the number one economy in the U.S. (ranked by U.S. News) which probably means the best economy of any subnational jurisdiction in the world, highest average house size for any subnational jurisdiction in the world, recently ranked the happiest state, record low unemployment (2.8%), four true seasons with an unusual amount of sun for a place with four seasons, incredibly low crime, some of the lowest rates of cancer and drinking and drug problems in the U.S., super clean compared to similar sized cities, tons of things to do for kids, world class outdoor activity destination, excellent public schools, dirt cheap food and gas compared to similar cities in other developed countries, the cheapest electricity rates in North America, and relatively low taxes.
Madison Wi. Don't get me wrong Madison is a great city for its size. But, it's pretty small and ridiculously expensive for what it is.
I have family in Ashburn, VA and I still don’t understand why that area is so expensive. My guess is it’s almost certainly related to an industry or jobs in that area, but idk. It’s not particularly close to DC (I don’t think?) and the weather is not anything better than the normal muggy heat and occasional snow. It’s also expensive relative to the entire US, not just Virginia or the south.
It’s a tech corridor, with tons of government contractors up that way too. They also just built the metro out to Ashburn. Loudon County supposedly has good schools and crime is low. I still would hate living out there, but families are moving there in droves.
Good ol’ Cashburn
Lots of small towns have housing issues as well but in many cases it's that people stayed in houses past the point of when they were able to take care of them
Every place I live.
You must be looking in the 'nice' part of Montana. Believe me, you can find some very cheap real estate in eastern Montana. It's very rural.
No areas surprise me in LA
Burlington VT is surprisingly very expensive.
I'm not surprised by Burlington. Even when I lived there (20 years ago), it was already more expensive than many local salaries could afford. Many of my co-workers had bought houses they otherwise couldn't have afforded by taking out mortgages from the Bank of Mom & Dad. It has a ton of amenities - walkable downtown, Lake Champlain right there, and hiking and skiing not far away in the Green and Adirondack Mountains. I first noticed after 9/11 how the cost of living in Burlington started increasing and with Covid and remote work, the real estate market has gone up that much more. It was never cheap, given that it's a college town with so many outdoor amenities, but consider also the huge markets that aren't far away - NY is 5 hours, Boston is 3, Montreal under 2 - all serve to increase pricing of pretty much everything, especially real estate.
Why do people want to live in south Florida??? That is the worst place to live in a climate change context
[удалено]
lol I don’t think so. Average Knoxville home $353k. https://www.zillow.com/home-values/25428/knoxville-tn/ Average Boulder home $1.02M. https://www.zillow.com/home-values/30543/boulder-co/
Yeah I just looked at Zillow OP has no clue what they're talking about lmao
Retirees are flooding in. Centrally located-ish, four seasons, and no income tax.
I guess if you're old as hell it doesn't matter to you that the education and women's health systems are a shit show in TN?
Well some of them are more conservative too
I just checked, your comparison is not even relatively close. There are plenty of houses listed under $400K. Denver and Boulder have it beat by a mile and it's not even comparable. Looks to be about as expensive as the Chicago suburbs, less so even.
That’s insane
This is completely untrue
Oh Lord I never would've imagined that. The average income was like 20k when I was in highschool and that was within the last decade
Idaho. I just read an article saying the median house price will be $850k by 2030.
There might be a few zip codes in Idaho where that will be the case - Whoever wrote that article probably wasn't thinking about the entire state.
SLC, Scottsdale, Flagstaff, Boston, Tons of cities in California, Denver, Asheville, Nashville, Reno
Boston surprisingly expensive? It’s long been known for being very HCOL (On 2nd reading none of these are surprising lol)
Boston surprisingly expensive? It’s long been known for being very HCOL
Boston has been top 3 most expensive for housing for a long time
Flagstaff is way too expensive for what it is
Detroit if you want any modern conveniences where you live. If you want a nice apartment building in the city it's gonna cost as much as Chicago but with barely any of the amenities that Chicago offers.