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FWIW, this is also true in Boston. I commute from southern NH to Harvard Sq. every day. Unless you have two substantial incomes, or are ok with sub-par schools

FWIW, this is also true in Boston. I commute from southern NH to Harvard Sq. every day. Unless you have two substantial incomes, or are ok with sub-par schools and a tiny space, it's hard to live close to most economically dynamic cities.

seibelj 8y ago
No, this is because you chose to live extremely far away! There are plenty of places in Massachusetts that are closer and affordable, with decent schools. Every employee I've had who commuted from NH to Boston wound up pretty miserable because of the commute.
- ducster696 8y ago
  There aren't that many places left out there between NH and Boston that are on the affordable scale. Do you have a couple towns in mind that are fairly affordable still? I have been looking in the suburbs of Boston and when I switched it up to look at Southern NH it was crazy the changes in prices as well as how long the houses have been on the market.
  - replicatorblog 8y ago
    Depends a lot on your definition of affordable. Assuming a budget of $500K, a desire for 3-bedroom+, a commute to Boston/Cambridge, and access to a strong school system, these are the towns I'd consider: + Acton: there are a couple dozen 1,500 sqft. split levels that come on the market per year. Good commuter rail access to the red line. Top 20 state school system. + Andover/Burlington/Frankling are all top 50 school districts, have a limited selction of affordable, though mostly much older houses. You're still looking at an hour to boston, but if you want to work at Oracle, iRobot, Philips, etc. you'll be right there. + Westford: You'll find a decent stock of older 1,000-1,500 sqft. places. Top 20 state school system. Horrible commute into Boston proper, but not bad if you work on the 95/128 belt. Medford and Malden are gentrifying, the former more quickly than the latter, but you're making a pretty big trade-off in terms of school quality. If your office is walking distance to South Station, or North Station, there are some farther flung suburbs with commuter rail access that would be workable. E.g. Newburyport has a cool seaside vibe and a commuter train into the heart of the city, though you're looking at an over an hour of travel time. Southern NH is iffy. Windham is the main town for families, has reasonable prices and houses go very quickly in terms of sales. Salem, Hampstead, Pelham, Derry, Londonderry, not so much. You could theoretically commute from Nashua, but that seems insane to me. If you can afford something in the $750K range you'll find ok townhouses in hip cities like Somerville and Arlington. That sum will get your foot in the door of a fixer-upper in tonier towns like Winchester and Lexington. As you might be able to guess, I'm in the market as well, so if you've got any advice on hidden gems of towns, I'm all ears :)
    - ghaff 8y ago
      <Medford and Malden are gentrifying, the former more quickly than the latter I'd agree with that. A friend of mine basically gave up on Malden a couple years back, sold his place, and moved to Winchester.
  - ghaff 8y ago
    The other answer is pretty good. I live in Lancaster which is a bit further west still and it's not super expensive. If you get that far out, the trick is to live near commuter rail and/or one of the highways. In my case, I'm a few minutes from the Fitchburg commuter rail and Route 2. It's still a long commute if you work in the city. (I don't.) And it's not that bad to go into the city in the evening though the traffic is worse than it used to be. I'm actually going in in a little to see a play.
- replicatorblog 8y ago
  Serious question, what towns would you recommend. I don't deny I'm making a consumer choice, and said so in my comment. When I lived in Houston, I lived in a beautiful flat, a 20 minute walk from my office, and did so making the equivalent of $18/hr. I can't think of many places that'd be possible in the Boston area.
  - seibelj 8y ago
    Are you trying to buy, rent, or no preference? Do you have a family? Do you need public schools? Do you want a yard or are you OK with condos? What price range are you thinking? I've in Mass my whole life, I'll try and give advice.
    - replicatorblog 8y ago
      $500K budget. 3-beds. Strong public schools. Condo/Townhouse are fine. I'm looking at Acton, Westford, and Andover. Any recommendations would be great. My larger point is I used to live in the 4th largest city in the US and could afford a relatively new, relatively nice house for a pittance, a short distance from my office. I could spend more or less for a better school district, or use the savings for a private school. Boston and SF seem happy saying "Good schools, affordable house, hellish commute - choose 2" to their residents.
      - techsupporter 8y ago
        > My larger point is I used to live in the 4th largest city in the US and could afford a relatively new, relatively nice house for a pittance, a short distance from my office. (For what it's worth, I assume that you know most of what I'm about to write but I'm making the point anyway for others who might read.) You said in another reply that the city in which you used to live was Houston. The key difference between Houston (or Dallas/Fort Worth or San Antonio or almost anywhere in Texas--yes, including Austin) is that it is a relatively flat, geographically plain metropolitan area. In Houston and in Dallas, housing can sprawl for days. I'm from Texas, the Dallas area specifically, and the areas where housing and other development has been built is staggering to me. The entire DFW metro area has developed across a five-county area that's 1/3rd the physical size of the entire state of Massachusetts. I haven't even run the numbers on the Houston metro area but I'd wager it's a quarter again as large. Meanwhile, Boston is on a harbor and backs up to an area that was pretty urban back when Galveston was the main hub of Texas commerce and Houston was a sleepy town an hour north on the river. Boston--and San Francisco--are constrained by buildable area, geography (all that water, both on the coast and inland), and many, many years of "we build small areas to live in" type of thinking. My point is that the oft-made comparisons between east and west coast living to Texas are rather unequal. Texas is generally flat, dry, hot, and almost entirely dirt. You can build pretty much anything anywhere you're willing to connect to water and power. (Though that first bit is pretty hard to come by.) But it also means that a lot of those amenities that people really like are super difficult to access without at least two cars per household and the attendant problems of traffic--and where to put the roads[0] and who gets to pay for them[1]--infrastructure (back to that whole "water is getting scarce" thing), and the rest that come along with them. 0 - The Houston metro area is home to the widest freeway in the country, Katy Freeway, which is 26 lanes at its widest point including service roads. 1 - That's one thing Texas was happy to import from the northeast: toll roads literally everywhere. I don't think TxDOT has built a new or even expanded, taxpayer-funded, limited-access freeway in the past decade.

seibelj 8y ago

No, this is because you chose to live extremely far away! There are plenty of places in Massachusetts that are closer and affordable, with decent schools. Every employee I've had who commuted from NH to Boston wound up pretty miserable because of the commute.

ducster696 8y ago
There aren't that many places left out there between NH and Boston that are on the affordable scale. Do you have a couple towns in mind that are fairly affordable still? I have been looking in the suburbs of Boston and when I switched it up to look at Southern NH it was crazy the changes in prices as well as how long the houses have been on the market.
- replicatorblog 8y ago
  Depends a lot on your definition of affordable. Assuming a budget of $500K, a desire for 3-bedroom+, a commute to Boston/Cambridge, and access to a strong school system, these are the towns I'd consider: + Acton: there are a couple dozen 1,500 sqft. split levels that come on the market per year. Good commuter rail access to the red line. Top 20 state school system. + Andover/Burlington/Frankling are all top 50 school districts, have a limited selction of affordable, though mostly much older houses. You're still looking at an hour to boston, but if you want to work at Oracle, iRobot, Philips, etc. you'll be right there. + Westford: You'll find a decent stock of older 1,000-1,500 sqft. places. Top 20 state school system. Horrible commute into Boston proper, but not bad if you work on the 95/128 belt. Medford and Malden are gentrifying, the former more quickly than the latter, but you're making a pretty big trade-off in terms of school quality. If your office is walking distance to South Station, or North Station, there are some farther flung suburbs with commuter rail access that would be workable. E.g. Newburyport has a cool seaside vibe and a commuter train into the heart of the city, though you're looking at an over an hour of travel time. Southern NH is iffy. Windham is the main town for families, has reasonable prices and houses go very quickly in terms of sales. Salem, Hampstead, Pelham, Derry, Londonderry, not so much. You could theoretically commute from Nashua, but that seems insane to me. If you can afford something in the $750K range you'll find ok townhouses in hip cities like Somerville and Arlington. That sum will get your foot in the door of a fixer-upper in tonier towns like Winchester and Lexington. As you might be able to guess, I'm in the market as well, so if you've got any advice on hidden gems of towns, I'm all ears :)
  - ghaff 8y ago
    <Medford and Malden are gentrifying, the former more quickly than the latter I'd agree with that. A friend of mine basically gave up on Malden a couple years back, sold his place, and moved to Winchester.
- ghaff 8y ago
  The other answer is pretty good. I live in Lancaster which is a bit further west still and it's not super expensive. If you get that far out, the trick is to live near commuter rail and/or one of the highways. In my case, I'm a few minutes from the Fitchburg commuter rail and Route 2. It's still a long commute if you work in the city. (I don't.) And it's not that bad to go into the city in the evening though the traffic is worse than it used to be. I'm actually going in in a little to see a play.
replicatorblog 8y ago
Serious question, what towns would you recommend. I don't deny I'm making a consumer choice, and said so in my comment. When I lived in Houston, I lived in a beautiful flat, a 20 minute walk from my office, and did so making the equivalent of $18/hr. I can't think of many places that'd be possible in the Boston area.
- seibelj 8y ago
  Are you trying to buy, rent, or no preference? Do you have a family? Do you need public schools? Do you want a yard or are you OK with condos? What price range are you thinking? I've in Mass my whole life, I'll try and give advice.
  - replicatorblog 8y ago
    $500K budget. 3-beds. Strong public schools. Condo/Townhouse are fine. I'm looking at Acton, Westford, and Andover. Any recommendations would be great. My larger point is I used to live in the 4th largest city in the US and could afford a relatively new, relatively nice house for a pittance, a short distance from my office. I could spend more or less for a better school district, or use the savings for a private school. Boston and SF seem happy saying "Good schools, affordable house, hellish commute - choose 2" to their residents.
    - techsupporter 8y ago
      > My larger point is I used to live in the 4th largest city in the US and could afford a relatively new, relatively nice house for a pittance, a short distance from my office. (For what it's worth, I assume that you know most of what I'm about to write but I'm making the point anyway for others who might read.) You said in another reply that the city in which you used to live was Houston. The key difference between Houston (or Dallas/Fort Worth or San Antonio or almost anywhere in Texas--yes, including Austin) is that it is a relatively flat, geographically plain metropolitan area. In Houston and in Dallas, housing can sprawl for days. I'm from Texas, the Dallas area specifically, and the areas where housing and other development has been built is staggering to me. The entire DFW metro area has developed across a five-county area that's 1/3rd the physical size of the entire state of Massachusetts. I haven't even run the numbers on the Houston metro area but I'd wager it's a quarter again as large. Meanwhile, Boston is on a harbor and backs up to an area that was pretty urban back when Galveston was the main hub of Texas commerce and Houston was a sleepy town an hour north on the river. Boston--and San Francisco--are constrained by buildable area, geography (all that water, both on the coast and inland), and many, many years of "we build small areas to live in" type of thinking. My point is that the oft-made comparisons between east and west coast living to Texas are rather unequal. Texas is generally flat, dry, hot, and almost entirely dirt. You can build pretty much anything anywhere you're willing to connect to water and power. (Though that first bit is pretty hard to come by.) But it also means that a lot of those amenities that people really like are super difficult to access without at least two cars per household and the attendant problems of traffic--and where to put the roads[0] and who gets to pay for them[1]--infrastructure (back to that whole "water is getting scarce" thing), and the rest that come along with them. 0 - The Houston metro area is home to the widest freeway in the country, Katy Freeway, which is 26 lanes at its widest point including service roads. 1 - That's one thing Texas was happy to import from the northeast: toll roads literally everywhere. I don't think TxDOT has built a new or even expanded, taxpayer-funded, limited-access freeway in the past decade.