Q for those who moved to low cost places
Relatively low cost I mean, within the US. How are schools there? I browse Zillow occasionally, and often notice that while some city (Austin, Pittsburgh, Portland, etc) has much cheaper houses, on average, to live in a good school district you have to pay 2-3 times the average house price. Is it I indeed the case?
How about relocating to AZ for BASIS
I live in the Midwest. A four bedroom house in a good school district was $300k. I make less than the people working in CA and have to shovel snow sometimes but my money seems to go a lot farther.
Depends on what you consider is a good school. SFBA has many superb schools, even the “not good” schools in the area are better than what most of the country will have.
What characterizes good school? And what no so good. Is it rate at greatschools.org, or statistics of the test results? How do you know that the house in the good school district?
Define good schools and bad schools.
People want to live where there’s nice schools. Where there’s nice school there’s a nice town. Buying there also has much better resale value as well. So, yes, it is indeed the case.
So not much save compared to SFBA? Here commute contributes more to a house price, it appears. Ex. a house in Mountain View (looks like a 3rd world country sometimes, and no good schools) can cost not much less than in Los Gatos (probably, the only place here remaining relatively livable).
Los Gatos is extremely expensive - if you can afford a house there by all means, it’s only going to keep going up in value (at least long term) But if you’re talking about other cities then, yes there are great schools in other places like Portland, Tucson, Denver, etc. the bigger cities will again be more costly for the better school. You’re looking at $1mil for one of these other cities. But it buys you a bigger house, more land for 25%-50% off what Los Gatos is charging. Go further into rural America, or smaller city and you’ll find places like in Michigan that have nice communities, great schools that can be individualized for again, even cheaper. But you have trade-offs apparently. I for one prefer to stick around the Bay Area. Keep making the SF money, keep building up, try to fit in best where I can for schools, and eventually maybe retire where my money goes a long way. But you may want those nice schools now. In that case you can get it cheaper, with better house, but you’ll be in.... Michigan. Heh