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It doesn't have to be the entire cost of living, just the cost of housing. In Upstate NY there are farms everywhere so food is cheap. The upside to everything
by rm_-rf_slash 10y ago
It doesn't have to be the entire cost of living, just the cost of housing.
In Upstate NY there are farms everywhere so food is cheap. The upside to everything being gray and snowy all the time is that water is basically free. And as for other services like telcos and electricity, we pay around the same as the rest of the country.
But then comes rent.
It is ridiculous to think that unless you live waaaaaayyy out in the sticks there's no chance you are gonna afford a mortgage down payment anytime soon after graduating college (forget high school), and even as a professional with a professional partner the idea of buying a house is still years away. If we can't own a house we can't build equity. We can't use the property as collateral if we need a loan. It all goes back to housing, and right here, it sucks.
- morgante 10y agoWhat upstate NY are you talking about? I've looked into buying a house up there and it looks incredibly cheap.
- rm_-rf_slash 10y agoIthaca, where income-to-housing costs rival San Francisco. Like I said, it's fine if you want to live in the boonies, but that also means you're an hour away from anything resembling civilization.
- infinite8s 10y agoIthaca is also a college town (Cornell) so it's not quite a fair comparison to most rural areas.
- Shivetya 10y agoOne major difference in the North East is that many areas have very high property taxes. It isn't uncommon to find similar property taxes to be a tenth of those values in the South.
- rm_-rf_slash 10y agoBingo. Absolutely. Couldn't be stated enough. My brother goes to college in North Carolina. Demographically it is very similar: medium sized cities with rural stretched in between. Only real difference is weather and taxes. Can't do anything about the weather...