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> I've purchased a house and a rental property. The latter would have been unthinkable in the Bay Area. I purchased a house with my wife here in northern OH, a

• vasilipupkin 11y ago
  But, it's cold and rainy 7-8 months out of the year. A family of 3 doesn't need 4 acres. You have to admit that most people are willing to pay up for good weather
  • rubbingalcohol 11y ago
    The weather isn't even that good in Silicon Valley. I'd take rain and snow vs. dry and concrete.
    • vasilipupkin 11y ago
      well, I would say most people would consider weather in SV better than in Ohio. Of course, I agree, preferences differ
      • VLM 11y ago
        You can live a life of wealth and luxury, or you can enjoy the weather. Note that given the cost difference between living in SV vs Ohio (although I don't live in Ohio) I could spend 12.8 years with my wife at an all inclusive tropical resort. We'd probably get a discount if we lived there full time, so maybe 15-20 years. Not exactly your average retirement home. Or cash on the barrel no discounts or financial aid at all I could pay list price to send SEVEN kids thru Harvard for four years with a reasonable allowance for expenses and still have money left over. I don't have seven kids, but I guess I could pay cash on the barrel to send a couple thru med school or law school instead, maybe finance a startup or small business for one of them. Or I could cash buy six rental properties vaguely similar to the house I live in, and retire as a landlord (although from watching my great uncle do this, being a landlord is no retirement!). The rent off six houses, minus realistic expenses, would be a little less than I get paid now, but its interesting to think about.
        • Johnny555 11y ago
          The cost of room and board at Harvard is $60K/year, so sending 7 kids through Harvard for 4 years is $1.7M. While you can spend that much for a home in SV, you certainly don't have to.
          • eric_h 11y ago
            A house that can support a family of 9?
            • Johnny555 11y ago
              A house that can support a family of 9 is not cheap even in Ohio if you want to "life of wealth and luxury". You'll be paying over $1M for a 5 or 6 bedroom house in a "nice" part of Columbus (i.e. German Village), and you'll be paying around $1.2M for such a house in a decent (though not upper class) neighborhood in Silicon Valley.
              • freyr 11y ago
                A 6 bedroom house for $1.2 in SV? Good luck. It would be in disrepair or in a bad neighborhood at that price.
    • deleted 11y ago
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    • rconti 11y ago
      By any objective measure, it IS good. Concrete is not a weather condition.
      • freehunter 11y ago
        Concrete is most certainly a weather condition [1]. And better weather doesn't always make for a better environment. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urban_heat_island https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urban_heat_island
        • macNchz 11y ago
          The urban heat island is my single biggest point of displeasure living in NYC–I so love sleeping the windows open and a cool night breeze in the summer, which would be very possible in my quiet neighborhood of Brooklyn if it were to actually cool off at night. Instead we have hot days followed by slightly less hot nights, and I run the A/C all night lest I get no sleep at all.
      • emcq 11y ago
        Drought is an objective measure. Some of us prefer green grass and trees to arid climates.
    • dev360 11y ago
      The location is really nice, if you look at what you have around you. Comforts of a big city, youre on the coast, napa at a distance, skiing isnt far away, being able to hike and be close to the wilderness. The only drawback is cost. But I envy all of those possibilities compared to Miami, where all you have is a big city and sea, maybe watersports but precious little of everything else... and Miami is still not that far behind in terms of cost of living.
  • jerf 11y ago
    In Ohio, 4 acres is nothing special. What's "need" about when it's that cheap and easy to have?
    • vasilipupkin 11y ago
      By "need" I mean trading off things that you can't get in Ohio for 4 acres, which you can get in Ohio. How do you use 4 acres, physically?
      • fennecfoxen 11y ago
        > How do you use 4 acres, physically? Oh, there's a lot of things you can do with 4 acres. You can maintain extensive gardens and supply substantial quantities of your own food, as a profitable hobby. You can consider owning small farm animals like chickens, or maintain apiaries. Children and pet cats/dogs can run around outside and the children can exercise their imagination through unstructured play in a safe environment, especially in a multi-child family, potentially replacing overly-structured and expensive after-school activities for all but the youngest children (with many opportunities to increase their physical fitness through such activity). You or your children can also practice sports, such as baseball.
        • vasilipupkin 11y ago
          right, that's great. So, if I don't want to own a small farm and don't like sports, I should live in SF vs Ohio? Since most people don't want to own small farms, this explains at least some of the cost of living difference :)
        • nommm-nommm 11y ago
          >Children and pet cats/dogs can run around outside and the children can exercise their imagination through unstructured play in a safe environment, especially in a multi-child family, potentially replacing overly-structured and expensive after-school activities for all but the youngest children (with many opportunities to increase their physical fitness through such activity). You or your children can also practice sports, such as baseball. I lived in a tiny apartment right in the city growing up. And I mean very, very tiny - we shared beds. I did all those things in my city-dwelling childhood. You don't have to own the land to do that stuff. In fact city life lead me to spend plenty of time with the neighborhood kids, which was really great and you don't get that if you are spending all your time on your own property. If I was bored I literally just walked outside and see which of the neighborhood kids were out. I don't believe there was or is anything "unsafe" about public property and you can do sooooooo much more on public property. We did have a very small backyard that was shared with 6 families and we spent plenty of time there. And we got to interact with the other kids who lived in the building and the kid next door who saw us playing. You can also find a surprisingly large amount of nature in the city if you go looking for it. The idea you need to own 4 acres of land to play baseball is just laughable. I'm fact, seems more like living on 4 acres would be a prison. You couldn't leave without being driven!!! The problem is kids aren't allowed to go outside anymore by themselves. Growing up with very little made me such a better person. I'm way off the hedonistic treadmill.
  • cafard 11y ago
    Judging from the number of my relatives who have left the Great Lakes area for places south and west, many people will. But a northern Ohio fall can be beautiful, and I enjoyed the winters.
  • michael_h 11y ago
    > But, it's cold and rainy 7-8 months out of the year No, no it is not.
    • Toenex 11y ago
      I live and work in Manchester UK and we dream of 7-8 months of rainy weather (rather than the actual 11 months).
      • toyg 11y ago
        to be fair, El Niño gave us an incredible year. This winter was extremely dry.
        • elbrownos 11y ago
          Not in the UK. December 2015 was the wettest month in recorded history.
          • toyg 11y ago
            Yeah but 2015 overall has been extremely dry here in Manc, well into late November.
      • estefan 11y ago
        Damn I'd love 4 acres instead of a tiny flat in London :-/
  • freehunter 11y ago
    My wife and I don't need a four bedroom house for the two of us either, but land is cheap, houses are cheap, and I still have a tech job in MI working remote making six figures. Never set foot in SV. It's not about need. It's about the fact that my life is pretty awesome, I have tons of spare cash, I can relax on my deck and see nothing but trees and squirrels and my dogs running around. How much room does a family of three need? I think 4 acres is better than a two bedroom, third floor apartment surrounded by pavement and cars.
    • abakker 11y ago
      Couldn't agree more. Acreage is unbelievable therapeutic compared with the city. Source: Grew up on 4 acres of woodlands. Now live in SF. Would like to move back to a more rural setting after 3 years of hunting for parking spots and spending all my time/money getting away from the city when possible.
      • enraged_camel 11y ago
        >>Couldn't agree more. Acreage is unbelievable therapeutic compared with the city. If you're an introvert, sure. I love the countryside myself. But extroverts get their energy from being around other people, and dense cities such as NYC are great places for that.
        • dev360 11y ago
          >>> If you're an introvert, sure In addition, if you are an introvert, you would love a long commute sitting alone on a bus or train. You should move to the city for sure.
        • Tempest1981 11y ago
          So invite some friends over for a beer and BBQ... Or be an extrovert at work for 9 hours a day. OTOH, I know what you mean about the mental stimulation of big cities -- need to feed that ADD. :-)
    • deleted 11y ago
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  • ghaff 11y ago
    Silicon Valley does have extraordinarily good weather for my tastes as well as access to great recreational activities etc. But I'm not going to pay to live there just for the weather. Whether or not one cares for Ohio, there are lots of areas in the US where acreage is relatively affordable. Personally, I like having some separation from neighbors. (I live a little ways outside of Boston. The weather here is probably not better overall than Ohio--which I wouldn't describe as cold and rainy for 7-8 months of the year.)
    • thearn4 11y ago
      Personally, I've always thought the midwestern US actually has a nice set of four pleasantly distinct seasons (Fall being my favorite). I actually like the snow too, though when it starts to get so cold that it doesn't snow anymore (last year comes to mind), then it does stop being very fun.
      • ghaff 11y ago
        It's a fair point about seasons. I would probably miss them--and Fall is probably my favorite in New England as well, even if I do like winter activities here.
    • ZanyProgrammer 11y ago
      Seasons don't exist in the Bay Area. And I've noticed over the past decade that summer keeps expanding and moving into other seasons. It took me a while to get used to the Indian summers here, but they've increasingly moved on into December it seems. According to wunderground, Palo Alto Airport reached 80 degrees F on Feb 16th!
  • jqueryin 11y ago
    I live in a 3400 sqft ranch on a lake with hundreds of square feet of frontage 20 minutes from downtown Charlotte without traffic and 1.3 acres of land for 600k. The weather is nice and it appreciated ~80k in a little over a year. Are market prices even remotely comparable to affording that kind of luxury in SV? Hell no. It's beyond comprehension for me to justify the cost of living out there. I'd be trading in for a postage stamp in an overly populated area.
    • mrfusion 11y ago
      Would it be just linear feet of frontage?
    • freyr 11y ago
      Sure, but do you have excrement-covered sidewalks, belligerent panhandlers, and cockroach-infested restaurants?
  • astrowilliam 11y ago
    The fact that they have 4 acres of land is much more valuable to his kids than having to share that property with a bunch of other people in the city, in my opinion. There is room to expand, build, hike, bike, walk, climb a tree, breathe fresh air that doesn't smell like pavement, enjoy nature. Plus, who said they don't like cold weather? I grew up on the East Coast and I love Winter. I love seasons. I love snowboarding and hiking in the Winter. I lived in SF for a while and didn't really enjoy it at all. Too much congestion, too many people and no fresh air. I could barely see the stars at night. That being said. To each their own.
    • mrfusion 11y ago
      Why do you like hiking in the winter? I'd like to learn to like that.
      • Johnny555 11y ago
        Try snowshoeing
      • jbattle 11y ago
        It's brilliant. Once you get moving you won't even notice the cold. A snow-filled forest is one of the quietest and most peaceful places you are likely to ever find.
      • bglazer 11y ago
        In short, peace and quiet. I really can't describe how sublime the quiet of a winter forest is. Also, this may or may not be appealing to you, but I find it to be a humbling experience. Being alone in an empty winter forest really makes one feel insignificant. Not in the bad way of making one feel worthless, but instead in the way that makes your worries and aspirations seem trivial. I think it's a nice respite from the myriad concerns of daily life.
        • jawilson2 11y ago
          Nothing beats crunching snow on an early morning or late evening hike. NOTHING.
  • modfodder 11y ago
    I wouldn't give up my childhood living on 7 acres that backed up to hundreds of acres of state land for anything. And the weather in the Tornado Alley of Oklahoma was great, ranging from freezing snowy winters to hot and humid summers, giving my childhood a huge range of enjoyable experiences. I could hike, camp, fish, hunt, sled, ride dirt bikes, build stuff, blow up stuff (with my homemade fireworks), play most sports, all just steps from the back door. Seeing wild turkeys, dogs, coyotes, horses, fluffy bunnies (fierce killers), the monarch migration and too many types of birds to list without having to leave the property was invaluable to my curious mind. The only other experience I'd consider possibly better for raising a child is in NYC (my current home) where the best art and culture exist a short subway ride away, with regular interactions from seemingly every culture in between. You can have your moderate weather fluctuations (I don't consider cold, rain or snow "bad" weather), I'll take a world of life outside my door.
  • justin66 11y ago
    But, it's cold and rainy 7-8 months out of the year. Northern Ohio? That is not even remotely true. The climate has four very distinct, traditional seasons. I missed that in SF. Time seems to pass a lot quicker when you don't have nature reminding you that it's happening.
  • mrfusion 11y ago
    Ohio is? I didn't know that.
• mtalantikite 11y ago
  Well, it all comes down to preference. Many people are responding about how they'd never trade the acreage and large house for a small place in a dense city, and that's totally fine. Personally, I'd never trade the density and culture of NYC for something suburban or semi-rural, and that's totally fine too.
  • thearn4 11y ago
    Oh, I agree that it's definitely an individual preference, no judgement on anyone meant on my part. I grew up in a large city, and before settling down here, I've lived in a few places (the most densely zoned probably being northern Italy while in the military). I actually do appreciate urban life and how great it is to be able to either walk or take public transit anywhere I need to be. But it turns out I really like having space to play more. YMMV.
  • geebee 11y ago
    It depends on the nature of the city, of course. I live in SF, and I actually find myself lusting for both the peace of the countryside and a more urban city. Seriously, I do mean the peace of a big city. I actually think many parts of SF are in a suboptimal density band where it is quite dense, but still car dependent, dense enough to add a lot of cars and concrete but not quite dense enough to reclaim some of the pedestrian space… this link explains it pretty well. http://www.spur.org/publications/article/2008-06-01/eye-street http://www.spur.org/publications/article/2008-06-01/eye-stre...
    • mtalantikite 11y ago
      Totally agree about SF, it's not dense or diverse enough for my tastes either. For me the ideal setup is a place in a major city like NYC, getting out of the US at least once per year, and some time in the country every so often to reset.
      • geebee 11y ago
        I'm 50-50 on SF. I did grow up in SF (west of twin peaks, though, so a less urban experience even by SF standards), but I was exposed to a more urban experience when I lived for a year in Paris when I was a kid, and later NYC for a year as a young adult (in my 20s). SF really is pretty diverse, especially in terms of language diversity (I read somewhere that the number of languages spoken by 1000 or more households is higher in SF than even NY, though I don't have a cite for this). SF also does have decent density by US standards as long as you're not talking about NY. (http://beyonddc.com/?p=4808 http://beyonddc.com/?p=4808). I also find that getting out of the city for the countryside or natural surroundings is faster and easier in SF than almost anywhere else (ie. the time it takes to get from a very high density urban neighborhood into a very quiet forest or rugged, undeveloped coast is amazingly short in SF). Since I really value both things, I do get a lot out of living in SF, but there is a kind of truly urban neighborhood, with trees and open pedestrian areas, that is much more prevalent in larger, more dense cities like NY or Paris. The images in that link about curb cuts, contrasting the street scape between Park Slope and Dolores Street in SF, pretty much sums it up. The image of Park Slope manages to both peaceful and highly urban at the same time, largely because it's urban enough to give up on cars and driveways. It almost seems like SF got just close enough and then blinked. Aside from NY, though, and maybe a very few parts of Boston or Chicago, there really isn't much else out there, at least in the US. For the west coast, you just aren't going to find as many of those little red dots clustered (high density), even in Seattle. Interestingly, LA is becoming much more urban. That said, SF's high density urban neighborhoods are pretty limited in size, and they are breathtakingly expensive.
• gogopuppygogo 11y ago
  Truth. Time even ranked Solon, Ohio in the top 10 places in the country to live. I have family there and it's a great community. http://time.com/money/3984416/solon-ohio-best-places-to-live-2015/ http://time.com/money/3984416/solon-ohio-best-places-to-live... You can buy a 4 bedroom house with a three car garage and a big plot of land for less than a 1 bedroom apartment in SV.
  • tedmiston 11y ago
    > You can buy a 4 bedroom house with a three car garage and a big plot of land for less than a 1 bedroom apartment in SV. Sure, you can, but your salary would be much lower (half?) in Cleveland. And unless you're fully remote, there are far fewer tech jobs in that area. (I also live in Ohio.)
    • deleted 11y ago
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  • kafkaesq 11y ago
    If bedroom multiplicity and garage size are key metrics for you... then I guess maybe Solon, Ohio is your kind of place. People who stick it out in places like SF, NYC or London tend to have different considerations in mind.
    • deleted 11y ago
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    • jen729w 11y ago
      Why'd this get downvoted? This comment has been in my mind since I started reading this thread. I'm 39, happily single, and live in inner Melbourne, Australia. I pay a small fortune in rent. I could live out in the 'burbs in a 4 bedroom house with a 3 car garage - but that's my vision of hell on Earth! I absolutely have "different considerations". Bars and restaurants literally on my doorstep, a walk to work, no desire to own a car, singles like me as neighbours rather than families, etc.