but everything is better in California

please, you can't ignore the central valley/wasteland

...........

Everything is better here in CA except for cost of living, constant water issues (which will never go away due to politics and our ever growing water demand vs naturally arid climate), atrocious air quality, general pissy attitude of the residents, and so on.

The valley as a gem or two, but it's really an awful pit.

Same with the inland empire IMO

There's a townhouse right up the street from me here for $350k, and you'll be locked into a great school district. Sadly, we rent ours and have little desire to buy and tie ourselves to property, we used to live in the midwest in a major metro area and paid $150k for a nice house out there, easily worth $500k or more in some areas here, and we still took a 10% loss when we sold in 2012.

is that better or worse than the generally cynical attitude of East Coasters?
out of curiosity, what town?

a nice 1-br condominium here in NoVa is about that price, and that doesn't include another $500 or so in HOA fees...

Boston suburbs are pretty expensive, 400 bucks a square foot in the nice suburbs. Nothing compared to San Jose, from what I've heard though. San Jose has enclaves full of people my age with people spending almost a grand a square foot for large houses. But I heard close to that you can have pretty unsafe areas.

Hey, I like East Coasters! Of course, I am one.

I rode a bicycle yesterday. Wearing a kit. It was weird.

Coldwell Banker used to do a ranking of Division 1 college football programs based on the average home price in that town. If I remember correctly, Stanford (Palo Alto) was ranked No. 1 and Boston College (Chestnut Hill/Newton) was No. 2.

$1000/ft? I don't care if it's in Palo Alto, no thanks.

When I lived in Boston a few years back people told me that living near good schools was meaningless because they still did random lottery and busing, so no matter if you lived next to a school, your kids might not go there. Is that no longer the case? Of course, suburbs might be a different story, but the people telling me this lived in Back Ban and on Beacon Hill and places like that downtown.

I think that's just in Boston city schools, but in suburbs you go to the closest school. So that's why certain suburbs tend to be really desirable. I think in a lot of instances, certain school districts are seen as high performing because of the socioeconomic factor, and the kids are already at an advantage due to their upbringing. What the state is doing now, if I read correctly, is actually downgrade some high performing districts because they're not getting growth out of the lowest performing students. So pretty interesting

School choice, charter schools, and the constant increase of special education is breaking that location mold.

I think I just hate people and find them to be a general nuissance, so by definition I guess I fit my own CA description as well as the east coast description.

I live in Redwood City on the Atherton border. Atherton is the most expensive house/avg dealie in the country, Redwood City has the best climate by government test!

It was expensive to buy a house here, but since we bought 2 years ago the valuation has gone up 300k.

Austin is a good mix. It's more expensive than Houston, but you can get pretty high end suburban homes 10 miles from downtown for ~$150/sq ft.

You take that back now!

The IE all around is pretty bad, but its a big area. We moved out of our old neighborhood in San Bernardino because there was a series of homicides and home invasions targeting white families with nice cars. We were one of the few white families in the area, which I've been accustomed to but 3 dead within 2 miles was too much. The area I'm in now is pretty nice, most millionaires tied down to this region live on this hill. The town also has a massive cycling community. Unfortunately, I'm not one of those millionaires.

We always talk about moving but both of us have good jobs, I have an amazing retirement (80% at 60), and a good home. It's hard to walk away from all that.

We were in Boston last week and stayed in a 'bad' area (Dorchester) which other than stray pit bulls all over the place was nice. Once you've visited West Oakland, the bar for bad neighborhoods is pretty high.

Man gets jail term for torturing puppy in front of 4-year-old daughter - LA Times ...we all have our crosses to bear.

...+1

Yeah, the IE isn't really too "ghetto", just hot, smogy, congested and boring

There is nice wine and countryside in the south by Temecula, and there is access to great hiking and nature on the north and eastern ends. I just got back from a weekend-long company camping trip in Idyllwild, involving a day-hike up San Jacinto.

I did that the other day. They still fit .... sort of.

Feels like a relief to be done with public schools. We're "un-schooling" our 14 year old.