So, what's YOUR idea of the perfect place to live?

[roadhunter]

Interesting discussion.

For me it was about getting away from all the downsides of big cities. Wasting time sitting in traffic and waiting in lines is no way to live IMO. Dealing with the crime that comes along with big cities and things like gangs in schools is also something I am not willing to compromise on either. Another big thing is cost of living. Sure there are high paying jobs in places like California but the cost of living is so out of whack that you really dont' come out ahead. And last but not least things like clean water and clean air are important to me. I dont' want to be drinking sewer water like they do down in places like Texas and California where water is going to be an even bigger issue moving forward.

 

[Country Geek]

It's funny... I been doing an analysis for the last year on some of the houses/farms in rural Northern VA (specifically western Loudoun County) using data from Redfin and Trulia and found that the same house with Comcast or FIOS availability is generally $100K more than the exact same house without any high speed internet, even after controlling for other factors (YES -- I'm a data analysis nerd and do this type of work as part of my day job, too.) Maybe it's just a phenomenon of northern Virginia and all of the DC-folks that want to get out of the Beltway, but I found that interesting.

Oh I don't doubt that. I live in a rural exurban area where areas with acceptable DSL (3-10 Mbps) are in close proximity to areas with no high speed alternatives, sometimes interleaved based on where the DSLAMs are. It's like two completely different real estate markets.

I have a co-worker who ended up selling a beautiful log cabin in the woods to move to suburbia because he could not telecommute from the log cabin. Verifying availability of high-speed internet is now part of the normal due diligence of most buyers, not having it doesn't cut the value of a property so much as make it virtually unsellable.

 

[Sawyer Rob]

Based upon his analysis of these criteria, and some "secret algorithm" for ranking places, in his opinion, the best places to be are:
1.Utah
2.Idaho
3.Montana
4.Washington
5.Colorado

All I can say is, I HOPE everyone moves to those states!! They can have them! lol

SR

 

[Sysop]

They call it "Almost Heaven" for a reason...

 

[ovrszd]

All I can say is, I HOPE everyone moves to those states!! They can have them! lol

SR

Me and you Buddy, me and you.

 

[ovrszd]

They call it "Almost Heaven" for a reason...

Nice, if it's Heaven to you. If not it's just a postcard.

 

[Redneck in training]

When we were younger we used to live in the large city in a small GI house. Then we build new house in a small town in proximity of two lakes and bike trail. We loved the schools there. Kids could walk or ride bicycles to school. When kids left for college we realized that our house was about twice as big as we needed so we started thinking about moving to new place. My dream since childhood was a piece of land away from the city but not completely isolated from civilization. So we bought 80 ac of vacant land about 45 miles from the big city. We sold our house year later and built new house there. We did some hobby farming for few years but decided that we should restore prairie on about 32 ac. That is out latest project. We also have large veggie garden under construction. I am thinking about few honey bee hives back on the edge of the woods and perhaps some chicken and ducks. My wife is a city girl so she was quite apprehensive to move to the country. The nights are dark and there are many sounds coming from the forest. The owls are calling each other, coyotes yelp in distance, the frogs provide all night racket, you have to check yourself for ticks and the chiggers are nasty itching. But if I would tell her to sell it and buy a condo in the city she would tell me only over her dead body. The thinking is that the place should keep us active and in better health than life in the city. Only thing that is lacking is large mountains not too far away (we downhill ski). Only internet is satellite (it is fast enough but it is expensive and has limited data per months) and I had to install a mobile phone repeater with yagi antenna to get decent mobile reception in the house. We were thinking about selling it at some point and move to close the mountain region but after our grandchildren were born we decided to stay put where we are.
So that is our piece of heaven.

 

[dave1949]

They call it "Almost Heaven" for a reason...

Heaven doesn't have that many rocks. You need a skeleton bucket for your FEL. If you get one, I'd like to borrow it. :laughing:

 

[OldMcDonald]

You would be an interesting man to spend time with. I'll bet you've got some stories to tell.

On the other hand you might just find me boring and a prime example of COMA (Cantankerous Old Man Association) but you can find out without it costing you anything. If you follow the link on my signature you can download a fair chunk of my book "How not to make millions - but still enjoy a rich rural life." It is a free sample, and is the part about me and where I have been.

 

[mark02tj]

They call it "Almost Heaven" for a reason...

Beautiful piece of property, Sysop!! Kinda makes me sad that I closed the deal on selling what was left of the family farm just over the hill from you in Hoult.