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Ask HN: How to find a small town to relocate for remote work?

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Re: Ask HN: How to find a small town to relocate for remote work?

#221

Post by noodlesUK »

cbanek wrote: post #153
rswerve wrote: post #4

College towns. Pick some states, and go visit towns with colleges in them. They'll have restaurants and groceries, and those faculty kids have to go to school somewhere. Internet should be passable, too. They won't be the cheapest small town option, but houses should come in well below a million bucks. The one town you mention, Lancaster, PA, is a model of the type.

This is where it's at. College towns are the best. They are the gems. Smaller, but with a large group of people from all over, you get that diversity you probably want. With people from all over, you get great food from all over, languages, neat people, art, etc. Another college town I like is Eugene, or Ellensberg. Flagstaff maybe? Depends on your climate, look for colleges with maybe 10k-ish students? Another one t…

Like Eugene, Corvallis is very nice. There’s decent food, and houses are a lot cheaper than Portland. It’s a lot closer to Portland on days you want to drive up, which is a plus.

Re: Ask HN: How to find a small town to relocate for remote work?

#222

Post by cbanek »

noodlesUK wrote: post #221
cbanek wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is where it's at. College towns are the best. They are the gems. Smaller, but with a large group of people from all over, you get that diversity you probably want. With people from all over, you get great food from all over, languages, neat people, art, etc. Another college town I like is Eugene, or Ellensberg. Flagstaff maybe? Depends on your climate, look for colleges with maybe 10k-ish students? Another one t…

Like Eugene, Corvallis is very nice. There’s decent food, and houses are a lot cheaper than Portland. It’s a lot closer to Portland on days you want to drive up, which is a plus.

Yeah, that's about the best. There's a lot of college towns that are within driving distance of a major city (like <2hrs), and that really opens it up. If you want the culture of a big city but small town living, college town! Concerts will go to Portland, and sometimes Eugene, but not always, so you can just go up and see them in Portland for example.

Re: Ask HN: How to find a small town to relocate for remote work?

#223

Post by cbanek »

OJFord wrote: post #162
cbanek wrote: post #152

Just wait a bit and see what happens in the housing market. I'm not saying it's ready for a crash, but sometimes renting for a year means everything will change. You can rent in a small town (cheap) or just stay where you are at for a while. Everyone is thinking like you during the pandemic when remote work was the norm. That pushed up housing prices in weird places, like Boise, and other places like Sedona. Places t…

It's a bit of a fool's errand to follow that advice though, you could have been doing renting in urban Canada for years (decades even?) being told a crash is coming any day now eh has too. And now it's extremely unlikely that one would wipe out the compounded growth from if you'd bought when you first thought of it. I think if it's to live in, just do it. Save market-timing for a second home/investment/flip - and eve…

I think if it's to live in, AND you can afford it AND it makes sense financially on a fixed rate mortgage, go for it. You are absolutely right on market timing, but that doesn't mean it'll go up forever, but over time, it does seem to generally go up a bit. But it's not really an investment, its a place to live, so don't pay so much on a mortgage that you are risking your financial health - think it should be about equal to rent or maybe a little more.

Just remember, turkeys think everything is great, until Halloween, when they get put in the freezers for Thanksgiving. If you look at the graph of their weight from birth to death it's always going up, so it should go up forever. But on Halloween it'll go down a bit, then level out forever. ;)

Re: Ask HN: How to find a small town to relocate for remote work?

#225

Post by pyb »

throwaway787544 wrote: post #142
2Gkashmiri wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm curious, how do you people deal with medical emergencies? I live in a city and I have 3 24x7 hospitals within walking distance. I have gone dozens of times on foot at 3 in the morning to get medicine.

"It depends." My town actually has an E.R. and urgent care. We have a CVS in town too (my town has a lot of stuff!!). There are also medical taxis (there are no regular taxis here) and private hire ambulances that'll take you if you need a different hospital. Typically you get the number of the closest general doc to you, and make good friends with your neighbors, so somebody can drive you to a hospital right away if…

Why did you struggle to get car parts shipped?

Re: Ask HN: How to find a small town to relocate for remote work?

#226

Post by aaaaaaaaata »

closeparen wrote: post #82
pontifier wrote: post #39

My method sure hasn't worked very well... or has it? I was looking for cheap warehouse space to start a business in, and did a nation-wide search for the largest, cheapest building in the entire continental US. I found one that seemed too good to be true. a 220,000 sqft metal warehouse and office complex on 17 acres. I thought the price was a typo at $375k.The agent assured me that the price was correct, and I flew o…

I would expect big money coming into a small town to face serious static from local authorities unless and until you're cozied up to its political scene.

Nobody saying or reading this sees this as a problem?

Re: Ask HN: How to find a small town to relocate for remote work?

#227

Post by AussieWog93 »

neilv wrote: post #100
GauntletWizard wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Promote yourself and your town. I'm looking for a new home in the same way as the OP, and my best hope is that a few dozen like-minded nerds will gentrify a small town, because they have been so undercut by cities of late.

> a few dozen like-minded nerds will gentrify a small town How does one do this in such a way that it's welcomed by people who already make their home there? (I can imagine a lot of ways this could go work out badly, but don't immediately know a good approach.)

I mean, simplest way would be to build a plant that creates hundreds of well-paying jobs. Companies do this all the time.

Re: Ask HN: How to find a small town to relocate for remote work?

#228

Post by xupybd »

mkl wrote: post #203
xupybd wrote: post #183

Move to New Zealand. We're full of small towns with great life styles.

Small towns, yes, but without a car? Maybe my New Zealand definition of "small town" is smaller than they're thinking.

Yeah, New Plymouth or Napier might be about the right size. You are right about the car but we don't have suburbs far away from the cities like the states so it's possible to get around without a car.

Re: Ask HN: How to find a small town to relocate for remote work?

#229

Post by ryanmercer »

78124781 wrote: post #130
pontifier wrote: post #39

My method sure hasn't worked very well... or has it? I was looking for cheap warehouse space to start a business in, and did a nation-wide search for the largest, cheapest building in the entire continental US. I found one that seemed too good to be true. a 220,000 sqft metal warehouse and office complex on 17 acres. I thought the price was a typo at $375k.The agent assured me that the price was correct, and I flew o…

Wow, Pine Bluff is quite a place to move to out the blue. Still, there's good interstate access and a local state U. Curious why the city is so reluctant to support new businesses. You might try Jonesboro, Fort Smith, or Hot Springs if you're looking for cheap nearby places. North Little Rock or someplace in NW Arkansas too would have more nearby amenities, albeit at higher (though still quite affordable nationally)…

>Curious why the city is so reluctant to support new businesses.

I'm guessing the town wants him to do very basic stuff to get the property up to code, and he doesn't want to. Anther person pointed out in a comment that comment chain OPs twitter had posts about about holding somebody at gunpoint in apparent frustration. To me it sounds like OP knew absolutely nothing about commercial real-estate, absolutely nothing about local laws, and plopped down a bunch of money on a property without doing some homework.

Re: Ask HN: How to find a small town to relocate for remote work?

#230

Post by octoberfranklin »

spoonjim wrote: post #194
pontifier wrote: post #39

My method sure hasn't worked very well... or has it? I was looking for cheap warehouse space to start a business in, and did a nation-wide search for the largest, cheapest building in the entire continental US. I found one that seemed too good to be true. a 220,000 sqft metal warehouse and office complex on 17 acres. I thought the price was a typo at $375k.The agent assured me that the price was correct, and I flew o…

Quoted post unavailable.

Have you been screened for assholery? I feel like making a mental health diagnosis on the basis of real estate investments is a mistake that one could make in those circumstances.
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