There are a number of factors that make relocation harder and less common than it needs to be. One is the number of underwater mortgages – mortgages in which th

There are a number of factors that make relocation harder and less common than it needs to be. One is the number of underwater mortgages – mortgages in which the remaining balance is greater than the value of the home – which make selling all but impossible. Another is that the parts of the country with growing economies and lots of great jobs are generally cities with incredibly high rents. It's not easy to move halfway across the country to take an entry-level job and somehow live off that if you need to pay Bay Area / NY Area / DC Area / etc rents, and doubly so if you have a family. This is one reason I think it's so critical to build a serious urbanist movement in US. The status quo of restrictive zoning, low building, and sky-high rents keeps hundreds of thousands of people from being able to access the places that would enable them to build better lives. If we allowed our cities to grow and invested in the transit infrastructure to keep them livable at even moderately higher densities, it could unleash a tremendous amount of prosperity.