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I've actually been considering a move to Ohio this June. Any suggestions for whetr in Ohio I should look? My main consideration is low CoL as I work remotely bu

I've actually been considering a move to Ohio this June. Any suggestions for whetr in Ohio I should look? My main consideration is low CoL as I work remotely but I'd like there to be stuff to do within a reasonable driving distance.

N1H1L 5y ago
Both Columbus and Cincy are great. Cleveland is iffy and too snowy in my opinion
- nickthegreek 5y ago
  I am very happy in Columbus. I hear Cleveland has better nightlife, but I came from up that way and the snow difference between Columbus and Cleveland is huge. I do not miss it.
  - justin66 5y ago
    Has snowplow service improved at all in Columbus? I was always struck by how bad it was compared to Cleveland. They got less snow, but dealt with the snow they got pretty badly.
    - nickthegreek 5y ago
      I am not sure. WFH keeps me inside most days and we have barely had any snow this year.
- sfotm 5y ago
  I'm an Ohio native that's recently moved back to the Columbus area myself. I know the area pretty intimately. Happy to respond to any questions about the area, as I'd love for there to be a larger tech scene around here.
  - 3825 5y ago
    Two questions, does the area have symmetric gigabit fiber? If so, how reliable is it in your opinion? If not, what is the best option for multiple family members working from home? How are water, electricity, sewage, road condition, utilities situation? Any reasons why a work from home worker might not want to live there?
    - mizzack 5y ago
      I pay $70/mo for full duplex gig FTTH thru AT&T in Columbus. Super reliable but not available everywhere. You can get 1gb down/100mb up cable for similar price city wide. No issues with utilities. Suburbs are better at handling snow removal/road maintenance than Columbus proper.
    - sfotm 5y ago
      The internet infrastructure in Columbus isn't on par with a lot of the larger cities, and I think you'd have a hard time finding the speeds you're looking for, judging by what I've found - seems like there's some limited AT&T fiber, but it's not widespread. My service is reliable, though, and I haven't found bandwidth to be a problem as a full-remote employee. Utilities are solid and seem much less suspect to outages compared to Seattle, a city I have a lot of experience living in. It's as though having more extreme weather more often ensures that the infrastructure is up to a certain rigor. Roads are important here, and are well-maintained and addressed (e.g. expect trucks to be salting roads in anticipation for snow storms). Roads are also incredibly well-laid out in an inner/outer belt system that I miss when driving in other cities.
  - scruple 5y ago
    Just out of curiosity, as another Ohio native who left and sometimes thinks of returning, where did you move back to Ohio from?
    - sfotm 5y ago
      I was in Seattle before moving back.
- tonyhb 5y ago
  Living in Cincy and it's pretty okay! If you're like me and you're coming from the bay then, well, you need a car. Many people that aren't in tech. Smaller town vibes, but that's a pretty good thing. Mortgage for a 3/4 bedroom with a garden etc. is 1/2 of my SF rent.
twoquestions 5y ago
Toledo's pretty good too, and there's a bunch of smaller cities around that have already shrunk as much as they're going to. Roads are decent too, even though everyone complains about the construction (until they take a trip through Michigan). Be careful going too cheap, as the rural parts have utterly terrible Internet service. A buddy of mine can't even play Deep Rock Galactic with us and his Discord calls sound robotic.
reaperducer 5y ago
When people ask me about Ohio, I always whole-hartedly recommend Cincinnati. But then you added "stuff to do within a reasonable driving distance," and I think that tips the scales in favor of Cleveland. And if you want to leave the car at home, you can take Amtrak from Cleveland to New York, Chicago, Toronto, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and D.C. I still love Cincinnati, but until international flying gets back in order, it's not an ideal starting point for adventure.
- mc32 5y ago
  Isn't Cincinnati excessively humid? On the other hand I hear the winters are cold but they lift pretty quick and don't linger on.
  - reaperducer 5y ago
    Humid, yes. Excessively so? Not compared to a lot of other places in America. Houston. Louisiana. Florida. Coastal Carolinas. I guess it depends on how well your particular body handles humidity. Cincinnati has fairly mild winters compared with the rest of Ohio. A meteorologist there explained it to me once. I think something about being in a valley, and the rivers (Ohio and Little Miami) moderate things a bit. He said in weather circles, it's sometimes called "the banana belt of Ohio."
- hardolaf 5y ago
  I mean, you can take the Amtrak from Cleveland to Chicago... but it leaves at like 3:30 AM which is why I never take Amtrak to Cleveland to visit my family from Chicago.
fullstop 5y ago
Most people are trying to move in the opposite direction. With that being said, here's a few interesting things about Ohio: 1. Vehicle safety inspections are not required 2. It's very flat, but their flag is the only non-rectangular state flag 3. Due to an oversight (congress never voted -- oops!), Ohio was not officially admitted to the union until 1953. If you want stuff to do within a reasonable distance you might want to look at the eastern side, near Pittsburgh.
- rurp 5y ago
  I'm not sure what #1 means. Can you expand on it? I don't recall ever putting a car through something like that.
  - wfleming 5y ago
    Some states do an annual safety inspection of vehicles - it's usually more or less "do your turn signals, brakes, and head lights work". Nowadays some states also need to do an emissions check. Some states require it every other year, some states I guess don't really require it at all?
    - brewdad 5y ago
      I had to do an "inspection" when I moved to AZ and first registered my car. I dreaded what they might find since it was kind of a heap of junk. The inspection consisted of making sure the VIN matched up on the various locations on the car.
      - BenjiWiebe 5y ago
        I did that too when buying a car out of state and bringing it to Kansas, but I don't think it was even called a _safety_ inspection. And definitely not an emissions inspection either. :)
    - throwawayboise 5y ago
      IDK how many states don't require it, but Indiana, just to the west of Ohio, does not require safety inspections for personal vehicles. A few counties near Chicago do emissions testing I think.
buscoquadnary 5y ago
If you are looking at Northern Ohio, Strongsville, North Royalton, Solon, Perrysburg, Parma Heights, Massillion all are decent places.
- selimthegrim 5y ago
  Parma/Parma Heights has the reputation of being the "Staten Island" of Cleveland FYI
gaoshan 5y ago
Columbus. I moved to Ohio from Florida some years back and do not regret it at all. I get so much more for my money that it feels like a cheat code. Move to Columbus and look into the various suburban communities. A fantastic one that is up and coming (though it's really getting quite far along that arc) is called Grandview. Leafy, compact, cute, cool shops, bike paths and restaurants and only 10 minutes from downtown, even in traffic. There are many more so do dig in and look around. I live in the greater Cleveland area and it's also good... just not Columbus good. If you want space look to the northern suburbs. There are a number that are extremely nice.
- sergiotapia 5y ago
  Looking at a 5 bedroom home and the prices seem just in line with Miami prices here in West Kendall (3000 sq feet). Where are you looking that feels like a cheat code?
  - gaoshan 5y ago
    I just checked 5 bedroom homes in Kendall and the cheapest on the first page of results was just under $800k. The average (first 6 results on Realtor.com) is $1,029,333. With Columbus you have to check the various neighborhoods (like Kendall is to Miami) so checking one of the nicer ones (Dublin) I see 4 in the $600k range with an average of the first 6 results of $837,283. That makes Dublin (a suburb of Columbus with top schools and higher than average incomes) quite a bit cheaper in the huge house arena. Kendall's average household income is $73,612 while Dublin's is $137,867. If I picked a neighborhood with an equivalent household income the price difference would be even more stark.
- selimthegrim 5y ago
  Cleveland has older and higher quality cultural institutions on your doorstep if that sort of thing is your jam.
mcdonje 5y ago
Cleveland and Cincinnati have the best architecture and natural features.
- jeffbee 5y ago
  And spectacular symphony orchestras.
  - selimthegrim 5y ago
    As well as world class museums.
kragen 5y ago
Moving to Ohio was one of the worst decisions I made in my life. Dayton is proud of its history of innovation but most of the innovators left for California 50 years ago where innovation was allowed. What's left is the lumbering bureaucracies and sprawling empires that grew from the innovators' products: NCR, the GM plant, Otis.
- gaoshan 5y ago
  The region you live in matters greatly. Take Dayton. It doesn't impact me as I have not been anywhere near Dayton in all the years I've live in Ohio. Columbus, on the other hand, is a really nice city with a great vibe. I'm guessing it could be like saying, "Don't move to California. Moving to Riverside was the worst decision of my life." The real message is don't move to places that are down and out.
  - kragen 5y ago
    Columbus did seem nicer when I visited. But is it really "not down and out"?
    - werm82 5y ago
      It's one of only 14 cities in the US to gain 100k residents in the last decade.
      - kragen 5y ago
        What startups has it produced in the last decade? Or, more knowably, the decade before that, 02002–02012?
        mNovak 5y ago
        CoverMyMeds was the recent poster child ($1B exit). Ohio has a large focus on insurance and med/biotech.
        PKop 5y ago
Spooky23 5y ago
I spent a few days in Cincinnati on our baseball tour a few years ago and had a great time. Seemed to have a city/small town vibe, and is a days drive from Chicago or Atlanta. Don’t know the area terribly well, but it seemed like a place that we wanted to “get to know” better. My family also really liked Pittsburgh.

N1H1L 5y ago

Both Columbus and Cincy are great. Cleveland is iffy and too snowy in my opinion

nickthegreek 5y ago
I am very happy in Columbus. I hear Cleveland has better nightlife, but I came from up that way and the snow difference between Columbus and Cleveland is huge. I do not miss it.
- justin66 5y ago
  Has snowplow service improved at all in Columbus? I was always struck by how bad it was compared to Cleveland. They got less snow, but dealt with the snow they got pretty badly.
  - nickthegreek 5y ago
    I am not sure. WFH keeps me inside most days and we have barely had any snow this year.
sfotm 5y ago
I'm an Ohio native that's recently moved back to the Columbus area myself. I know the area pretty intimately. Happy to respond to any questions about the area, as I'd love for there to be a larger tech scene around here.
- 3825 5y ago
  Two questions, does the area have symmetric gigabit fiber? If so, how reliable is it in your opinion? If not, what is the best option for multiple family members working from home? How are water, electricity, sewage, road condition, utilities situation? Any reasons why a work from home worker might not want to live there?
  - mizzack 5y ago
    I pay $70/mo for full duplex gig FTTH thru AT&T in Columbus. Super reliable but not available everywhere. You can get 1gb down/100mb up cable for similar price city wide. No issues with utilities. Suburbs are better at handling snow removal/road maintenance than Columbus proper.
  - sfotm 5y ago
    The internet infrastructure in Columbus isn't on par with a lot of the larger cities, and I think you'd have a hard time finding the speeds you're looking for, judging by what I've found - seems like there's some limited AT&T fiber, but it's not widespread. My service is reliable, though, and I haven't found bandwidth to be a problem as a full-remote employee. Utilities are solid and seem much less suspect to outages compared to Seattle, a city I have a lot of experience living in. It's as though having more extreme weather more often ensures that the infrastructure is up to a certain rigor. Roads are important here, and are well-maintained and addressed (e.g. expect trucks to be salting roads in anticipation for snow storms). Roads are also incredibly well-laid out in an inner/outer belt system that I miss when driving in other cities.
- scruple 5y ago
  Just out of curiosity, as another Ohio native who left and sometimes thinks of returning, where did you move back to Ohio from?
  - sfotm 5y ago
    I was in Seattle before moving back.
tonyhb 5y ago
Living in Cincy and it's pretty okay! If you're like me and you're coming from the bay then, well, you need a car. Many people that aren't in tech. Smaller town vibes, but that's a pretty good thing. Mortgage for a 3/4 bedroom with a garden etc. is 1/2 of my SF rent.

twoquestions 5y ago

Toledo's pretty good too, and there's a bunch of smaller cities around that have already shrunk as much as they're going to. Roads are decent too, even though everyone complains about the construction (until they take a trip through Michigan). Be careful going too cheap, as the rural parts have utterly terrible Internet service. A buddy of mine can't even play Deep Rock Galactic with us and his Discord calls sound robotic.

reaperducer 5y ago

When people ask me about Ohio, I always whole-hartedly recommend Cincinnati. But then you added "stuff to do within a reasonable driving distance," and I think that tips the scales in favor of Cleveland. And if you want to leave the car at home, you can take Amtrak from Cleveland to New York, Chicago, Toronto, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and D.C. I still love Cincinnati, but until international flying gets back in order, it's not an ideal starting point for adventure.

mc32 5y ago
Isn't Cincinnati excessively humid? On the other hand I hear the winters are cold but they lift pretty quick and don't linger on.
- reaperducer 5y ago
  Humid, yes. Excessively so? Not compared to a lot of other places in America. Houston. Louisiana. Florida. Coastal Carolinas. I guess it depends on how well your particular body handles humidity. Cincinnati has fairly mild winters compared with the rest of Ohio. A meteorologist there explained it to me once. I think something about being in a valley, and the rivers (Ohio and Little Miami) moderate things a bit. He said in weather circles, it's sometimes called "the banana belt of Ohio."
hardolaf 5y ago
I mean, you can take the Amtrak from Cleveland to Chicago... but it leaves at like 3:30 AM which is why I never take Amtrak to Cleveland to visit my family from Chicago.

fullstop 5y ago

Most people are trying to move in the opposite direction. With that being said, here's a few interesting things about Ohio: 1. Vehicle safety inspections are not required 2. It's very flat, but their flag is the only non-rectangular state flag 3. Due to an oversight (congress never voted -- oops!), Ohio was not officially admitted to the union until 1953. If you want stuff to do within a reasonable distance you might want to look at the eastern side, near Pittsburgh.

rurp 5y ago
I'm not sure what #1 means. Can you expand on it? I don't recall ever putting a car through something like that.
- wfleming 5y ago
  Some states do an annual safety inspection of vehicles - it's usually more or less "do your turn signals, brakes, and head lights work". Nowadays some states also need to do an emissions check. Some states require it every other year, some states I guess don't really require it at all?
  - brewdad 5y ago
    I had to do an "inspection" when I moved to AZ and first registered my car. I dreaded what they might find since it was kind of a heap of junk. The inspection consisted of making sure the VIN matched up on the various locations on the car.
    - BenjiWiebe 5y ago
      I did that too when buying a car out of state and bringing it to Kansas, but I don't think it was even called a _safety_ inspection. And definitely not an emissions inspection either. :)
  - throwawayboise 5y ago
    IDK how many states don't require it, but Indiana, just to the west of Ohio, does not require safety inspections for personal vehicles. A few counties near Chicago do emissions testing I think.

buscoquadnary 5y ago

If you are looking at Northern Ohio, Strongsville, North Royalton, Solon, Perrysburg, Parma Heights, Massillion all are decent places.

selimthegrim 5y ago
Parma/Parma Heights has the reputation of being the "Staten Island" of Cleveland FYI

gaoshan 5y ago

Columbus. I moved to Ohio from Florida some years back and do not regret it at all. I get so much more for my money that it feels like a cheat code. Move to Columbus and look into the various suburban communities. A fantastic one that is up and coming (though it's really getting quite far along that arc) is called Grandview. Leafy, compact, cute, cool shops, bike paths and restaurants and only 10 minutes from downtown, even in traffic. There are many more so do dig in and look around. I live in the greater Cleveland area and it's also good... just not Columbus good. If you want space look to the northern suburbs. There are a number that are extremely nice.

sergiotapia 5y ago
Looking at a 5 bedroom home and the prices seem just in line with Miami prices here in West Kendall (3000 sq feet). Where are you looking that feels like a cheat code?
- gaoshan 5y ago
  I just checked 5 bedroom homes in Kendall and the cheapest on the first page of results was just under $800k. The average (first 6 results on Realtor.com) is $1,029,333. With Columbus you have to check the various neighborhoods (like Kendall is to Miami) so checking one of the nicer ones (Dublin) I see 4 in the $600k range with an average of the first 6 results of $837,283. That makes Dublin (a suburb of Columbus with top schools and higher than average incomes) quite a bit cheaper in the huge house arena. Kendall's average household income is $73,612 while Dublin's is $137,867. If I picked a neighborhood with an equivalent household income the price difference would be even more stark.
selimthegrim 5y ago
Cleveland has older and higher quality cultural institutions on your doorstep if that sort of thing is your jam.

mcdonje 5y ago

Cleveland and Cincinnati have the best architecture and natural features.

jeffbee 5y ago
And spectacular symphony orchestras.
- selimthegrim 5y ago
  As well as world class museums.

kragen 5y ago

Moving to Ohio was one of the worst decisions I made in my life. Dayton is proud of its history of innovation but most of the innovators left for California 50 years ago where innovation was allowed. What's left is the lumbering bureaucracies and sprawling empires that grew from the innovators' products: NCR, the GM plant, Otis.

gaoshan 5y ago
The region you live in matters greatly. Take Dayton. It doesn't impact me as I have not been anywhere near Dayton in all the years I've live in Ohio. Columbus, on the other hand, is a really nice city with a great vibe. I'm guessing it could be like saying, "Don't move to California. Moving to Riverside was the worst decision of my life." The real message is don't move to places that are down and out.
- kragen 5y ago
  Columbus did seem nicer when I visited. But is it really "not down and out"?
  - werm82 5y ago
    It's one of only 14 cities in the US to gain 100k residents in the last decade.
    - kragen 5y ago
      What startups has it produced in the last decade? Or, more knowably, the decade before that, 02002–02012?
      - mNovak 5y ago
        CoverMyMeds was the recent poster child ($1B exit). Ohio has a large focus on insurance and med/biotech.
      - PKop 5y ago

Spooky23 5y ago

I spent a few days in Cincinnati on our baseball tour a few years ago and had a great time. Seemed to have a city/small town vibe, and is a days drive from Chicago or Atlanta. Don’t know the area terribly well, but it seemed like a place that we wanted to “get to know” better. My family also really liked Pittsburgh.