blgoode said:
If you can look at the Cascades Mountain range in Washington State. AWSOME!!!!
Also look around Washington State or Oregon. Very nice!!
Whatcha tryin' to do to us here, Brian???? We are already over-crowded and over-Californicated.
Tell 'em the truth about western Washington state....that it rains 365-and-a-half days per year and when the sun shines, the humidity is so high you get steam-fog banks off all the pavement. That's what I tell folks in trying to keep them away.
Factually, the Seattle area was recently named "The Most Over-priced Place" in the United States. IMHO that was a slam-dunk. Jobs have evaporated to where college grads are bagging groceries and the prices for goods & services are aimed at the working professionals (docs & lawyers). Boeing laid off something like 40,000 workers over the last few years, then blows optimistic smoke up our skirts when they re-hire a couple hundred of them back. There are enough Microsoft millionaires and relocated Californians who cashed their way out of that state to keep the overheated and over-inflated real estate market here afloat a bit longer. I'll pray for my friends here when the inevitable "correction" comes about.
The cost of housing here is astronomical, which is good for me since I am trying to sell my house now. For comparison with your corner of the USA, typical house prices here are currently about $200k-$300k in the cheaper areas and running $400k-$1mil+ in the nicer neighborhoods. FWIW, you can get houses in the $150k range in outlying areas, but the long commute, lack of security (ignorance is proud of itself here too), or lack of amenities makes those areas pretty untenable. Unfortunately, I will be looking to buy in a nearby market for an acre or two of land to put up a big shop & a 1,700-ish sq ft custom house. Land will hopefully only run me about $20k per acre, if I'm lucky.
Governmentally, we've got an idiot run-amok who doesn't recognize the term "REPRESENTATIVE government" with too much time on his hands who keeps putting "let the people run themselves" initiative end-runs on every ballot, which when the cheap-a$$ relocated Californians pass them erodes the tax base even further. And then they whine about the roads & bridges deteriorating into pothole farms that will damage their precious BMW/Lexus/Hummer SUV's or Porsche Boxters on their way to Starbux or the mall to catch the latest "gotta see it before my coworkers" movie pablum. Flippin' idiots.
The Seattle/Tacoma metro area, which is effectively squeezed between Puget Sound and the Cascade Mountains, now encompasses so much territory that it is crawling up into the foothills of the Cascades with little-to-no diminishing of house prices as you go out from the city centers, no matter how far out you are. We keep showing up in the "worst commute" cities listings as well. If you can get to work in under a half-hour (without backups) you are living close-in enough. Commutes in the one-hour-plus range are not at all unusual. Rush hour is about 06:00-10:00 and 15:00-19:00.
With all that complaining aside, when the sun shines here, it's as pretty a place as I've ever seen. It is gorgeous. But realize that it is insanely expensive to live among that beauty. As the others said, "Have a job to
move to." Western Washington state has become like Colorado, Montana, parts of Wyoming (Jackson Hole & Yellowstone area), Nevada (Las Vegas), New Mexico (Santa Fe & Taos), and Arizona (Phoenix or Sedona). Virtually all of Matt's (Pinoy Knife) comments on Oregon apply here as well. Like Peter said, "The whole country has been taken over by the soccer moms!"
Nah I'll just bury them and tell you when I see you.