I bought a 1700sq foot house that was ready to move in, in a pretty quiet and safe neighborhood, with decent (but not amazing) schools, in a suburb of Chicago f

I bought a 1700sq foot house that was ready to move in, in a pretty quiet and safe neighborhood, with decent (but not amazing) schools, in a suburb of Chicago for $230k with no HOA fees just 2 years ago. There are neighborhoods here that are really expensive, but others that are more affordable. If I worked in the city I would have at least an hour commute each day, though, but it only takes me 30 minutes to get to the city outside of normal commuting hours. Property taxes are kind of high around here though. I think I'm paying about what you're saying, and some of the homes I looked at (but decided against) were over $6000 a year in property taxes. Those were in areas with really good schools though. Also Illinois as a whole as a state has one of the highest overall tax burdens in the country, because the state is pretty much broke, so that might be enough to stay out of Illinois. You could actually find a place just over the border in Indiana, though, and have the same commute to downtown Chicago as I would have (about an hour) but suddenly have a much lower tax burden. I've worked with several coworkers in the past that commuted to the suburbs of Chicago for work every day from Indiana, it's doable.