I'm not sure if it would have small to midsize towns like you are looking for, but Nomadlist might be a good place to start as it is a curation of popular places for nomads (and no by extension remote workers) to relocate to. It uses a LOT of filters to weed out places you don't want and find the places that hit your "must haves" so it might be worth a quick look.
Ask HN: How to find a small town to relocate for remote work?
341–350 of 582 posts
Re: Ask HN: How to find a small town to relocate for remote work?
#342College 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.
Home prices are pretty high in most nicer college towns.
This is true, but it's on a sliding scale. I grew up in a town in Idaho, 100 miles from an interstate. I've lived in tech cities (SF, Austin) and now live in Ann Arbor. (Which, along with Chapel Hill, is basically the definition of "nicer college town.") So I've seen all sides of this.
It's true that housing isn't cheap. The difference is what you get for the cost. What I paid for my house in Ann Arbor would buy a house in Austin—but it would be a run-down, dated, small house without much in walking distance and a "who knows?" school assignment. Here in a "nicer college town," we live on more than an acre just outside town, still have top notch schools, and my wife's commute to her job at the hospital is only 10 minutes. (Far from the partying students mentioned earlier.)
Housing values are also a little more stable—a sudden tech downturn could strand you underwater in that Austin house. It takes a lot more to sap demand for housing in a university community, especially one with a big teaching hospital system. Add to that the value of a town having a demonstrated track record of caring about its schools. That doesn't grow on trees.
I guess, yes: housing prices are high. Certainly when you compare to towns like the one where I grew up. But if you compare to urban areas and high-end suburbs, then the value-for-money trade is way better, even in really nice college towns.
FWIW, I loved Iowa City when we were looking, and that probably would have been an even better money-for-value trade. Wife is a medical resident, so we were picking based on more than just lifestyle, and landed in Michigan.
Re: Ask HN: How to find a small town to relocate for remote work?
#343Earlier quoted context omitted.
Honestly looking into his issues, seems like he's getting dealt some bad cards after investing into a city that is letting him down.
Honestly, it looks like he isn't going about trying to work with the city very well. He also has videos on there of him lecturing public officials about how slow they are. At the same time, he is trying to build a fusion generator, a science museum, an industrial space, and a few internet businesses that seem to need a secure facility. The planning commission probably has no idea what to do with him, and it doesn't s…
Yeah seems like it's all over the place, but certainly doesn't seem like the city is doing its job when there are multiple break-ins in short period of time of 1 property.
Re: Ask HN: How to find a small town to relocate for remote work?
#344Earlier quoted context omitted.
Genuinely curious why you're intentionally misframing things this way. Is it political? Or you just don't like this guy for some reason? He's been robbed (from what I can see a dozen or more times), and in one instance called the police and held the criminal there until they arrived a few minutes later. Everything completely legal, above board, etc. This is a perfect example of someone telling the truth in such a way…
Private bounty hunter businesses are harmful to society.
People who rob businesses are harmful to society. Fixed that for you.
Re: Ask HN: How to find a small town to relocate for remote work?
#345Earlier quoted context omitted.
Residence halls are generally competitively priced, and is often cheaper than comparable housing off campus. Residence halls are more expensive than they used to be, but a lot of that is due to the type of housing that students are demanding. University-owned housing isn't a profit center, it's only priced to cover the costs of providing it.
Is that really true in college towns? My experience (at an urban university campus that required a year in the dorms) was that the dorms and meal plans were staggeringly expensive, but the cheaper off-campus housing tended to be in older homes that had seen some very hard use as students came and went. So maybe the dorm price would be comparable with a brand-new high-rise apartment, but students didn't really need th…
Off-campus housing often looks cheaper, but that's because you're often comparing apples to oranges. As you mention, the age of the property and how well it's been maintained often varies significantly. But most places you rent off-campus don't include utilities. --That old house in the Midwest or Northeast might look cheap compared to on-campus housing in August, but your electricity and gas bills in the fall and winter will quickly change your calculations.
Another thing to keep in mind is that, on average, students living on campus have higher GPAs, are less likely to drop out, are more likely to finish on time, feel a greater sense of social belonging, and are more likely to participate in extracurricular activities. Those benefits need to be factored in as well. There have been a number of studies about this, here's a summary of one of them: https://studentlife.uoregon.edu/student-success-and-housing-....
When it comes to meal plans, if you have your own kitchen then yes, you definitely CAN eat cheaper, but I don't know many college students who actually spend much time planning their meals, buying in bulk, and actually cooking the majority of their meals from scratch. Realistically they end up eating a lot of frozen dinners and eating out - especially for lunch when they're on campus anyway. When I look at the school I went to, their unlimited meal plan ends up costing about $9/meal on average, which is a lot, but that's 3 hot meals a day, all you can eat, and you don't have to spend time buying the ingredients, cooking the food, and cleaning up after yourself.
Re: Ask HN: How to find a small town to relocate for remote work?
#346Re: Ask HN: How to find a small town to relocate for remote work?
#347Let me give you the scoop on the Carolina's. I'm a developer living in the upstate of SC. I am an agnostic liberal which makes me a rarity but I was born here so I can go under the radar thanks to my deep melodious southern accent. Pros - Great climate 10 out of 12 months - Friendly people - Lots of outdoor activities - Beautiful beaches (Fripp Island and Kiawah especially) - Low cost housing (altho going up rapidly)…
"friendly people" but also "hateful racist trumpers"? Well which is it?
I imagine they are referring to different people, not one single person who is both.
Re: Ask HN: How to find a small town to relocate for remote work?
#348Earlier quoted context omitted.
You don't. Gentrifying a place pretty inherently means removing at least some of the people who live there. Why would the people of a small town go for that? Unless you're planning on subsidising the existing residents' lives forever as rent goes up. If you have the money and influence to "gentrify" somewhere... just build a new planned community in the middle of nowhere. The US has plenty of nowhere.
> Why would the people of a small town go for that? Because people are leaving in droves, only old people there are dying off, kids moved to better places, and the economy is dead? > If you have the money and influence to "gentrify" somewhere... just build a new planned community in the middle of nowhere. The US has plenty of nowhere. Seems like a waste of resources. The US has had countless migrations within its bor…
Yeah but the ones who remain are (voluntarily or involuntarily) the most committed.
Re: Ask HN: How to find a small town to relocate for remote work?
#349Let me give you the scoop on the Carolina's. I'm a developer living in the upstate of SC. I am an agnostic liberal which makes me a rarity but I was born here so I can go under the radar thanks to my deep melodious southern accent. Pros - Great climate 10 out of 12 months - Friendly people - Lots of outdoor activities - Beautiful beaches (Fripp Island and Kiawah especially) - Low cost housing (altho going up rapidly)…
"friendly people" but also "hateful racist trumpers"? Well which is it?
I mean, by large most people in most places in USA are friendly/neutral, since most of the people in SC are conservative, the brand of hate you get from the crazies is of the trump/maga/racist flavor. Where as in liberal areas, you'd probably get a different sort of hate.
Re: Ask HN: How to find a small town to relocate for remote work?
#350Earlier 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.
> I live in a city and I have 3 24x7 hospitals within walking distance. Where is that, just curious? I can't think of any place with three major hospitals within a mile or less?
Atlanta, Boston, Houston, and Philadelphia all have medical center areas with 3+ hospitals within walking distance of each other.
Houston has the largest medical center in the world with ~10 including Texas Children's Hospital, the largest children's hospital in the world (or at least it was a couple of years ago).