cheap towns to live in

[QinReno]

Various people have expressed interest in finding less expensive places to live, if not being on the road full-time. 

And there have been comments by various people about going to a small town, where apartment rents in the $500-600 range can be found. My choice would actually be a small town within an hours drive or so of a regular city, like RV-Sue did last summer, so then you'd have all the conveniences not too far away. Plus, I think the demographics favors this route for the future, as more people move to cities for work, making rooms available in the towns.

FWIW, I ran across the city-data site, which has lots of details about various towns, like rents, real estate costs, and usually cost-of-living relative to the US average. Eg, Deming NM is 80.7%. All the info you'd ever want to know.

- http://www.city-data.com/city/Deming-New-Mexico.html

Pick a town, check it out.

 

[AMGS3]

Sweet! Thanks for sharing that link Q.

So I checked it out, looking up a town that I'd lived near on the North shore of Lake Superior. A town that I though had a crazy cost of living. Turns out compared to the national average, this town rates as 90, so high, but still not above average.

My suggestion would be that anyone using this site to compare potential new places to live - look up some of your previous living areas. Then you can compare to something you know.

Looking up the above mentioned town also made me realize that there are some factors that make a place expensive or cheap to live in that are hard to quantify with raw stats. One of the things about this little town is that something like 85% of the economy is from tourism. Retail prices are ridiculously high. Almost everybody makes monthly trips (6 hrs round trip) to get groceries (at least the staples) because everything is so expensive there. People who don't make regular trips to the big town shop online and just get things sent to them.

Remember to factor in the cost of travel or shipping if you live too far away from stores with reasonable prices. Or factor in now having to pay $7 for a 4pk of toilet paper.

~angie

Sent from my VS501 using Tapatalk

 

[lenny flank]

Alas, cost of living index for Key West FL is ... 171.3.

Rats.

 

[John61CT]

Looks like I've never lived in a place under 150%

 

[travelaround]

Mar. 2016 cost of living index in Paradise: 94.4

Read more: http://www.city-data.com/city/Paradise-California.html#ixzz5WljogJaP

I used to think that was one of the most beautiful towns I'd ever seen.

 

[John61CT]

Mar. 2016 cost of living index in Paradise: 94.4

Read more: http://www.city-data.com/city/Paradise-California.html#ixzz5WljogJaP

I used to think that was one of the most beautiful towns I'd ever seen.

Sad before and after shots

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/amp/world-us-canada-46193429

 

[QinReno]

Large parts or all of 3 CA towns burned in the past year: Santa Rosa, Redding, Paradise.
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tubbs_Fire

First likely human cause, second flat tire on car and wheel scraping asphalt, third possibly...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pulga,_California

 

[ZoNiE]

Paradise is cheaper than Scottsdale!

 

[B and C]

Almost anywhere is cheaper than Cali.

 

[MrNoodly]

Back when I was considering my retirement options, I spent a couple of years researching places in the US with low costs of living. What I learned is that rent and housing costs are directly proportional to the desirability of the location. Expensive places are expensive because a lot of people want to live there, and cheap places are cheap because almost no one wants to live there. It's good old supply and demand. Desirability or lack thereof is linked to several factors, such as the local economy, availability of goods and services, crime rate, climate...

Now, if all you want is a livable place that seems like a bargain compared to cities like New York or San Francisco, there are a lot of options. But if you want/need someplace even cheaper than the modestly priced place you live now, then the pickings get slim. And there are tradeoffs. How many undesirable things are you willing to accept in order to get cheap rent? Cheap almost always costs something.

 

[cyndi]

Rent in Dolan springs start at about $400 that's for a trailer or Mobile home. Most are water haul. Not much to do there.

It's about 45 minutes from Kingman, AZ and an hour from Henderson, NV

http://www.city-data.com/city/Dolan-Springs-Arizona.html

I don't think there are any apartments, there. Maybe an in law or guest house...

 

[highdesertranger]

I heard Dolan Springs is a speed trap. there are warnings in the Gold Prospectors Association of America(GPAA) claims guide. is it true? highdesertranger

 

[jacqueg]

Paradise is cheaper than Scottsdale!

And it could be even cheaper still in the future. Apparently, one reason for its being well below California's COL was - wait for it - frequent wildfires in the area, coupled with having only one road out for 26,000 people.

Apparently, long-time residents have been evacuated due to wildfire several times in the past. This one was exponentially worse.

"[font=nyt-imperial, georgia,]There was only one way out of Paradise for residents fleeing the fire, the four-lane road known as Skyway, which quickly became paralyzed by traffic," [/font]
[font=nyt-imperial, georgia,]"[font=nyt-imperial, georgia,]The drive to Chico, which normally takes 20 minutes, was a four-hour crawl to safety, with flames engulfing both sides of the road."[/font][/font]
[font=nyt-imperial, georgia,]https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/11/us/california-fire-paradise.html[/SIZE][/font]

Anyone who's been in the Sierras recently knows how dry it's become. 

I grew up in SoCal, and was no stranger to wildfires. But when I moved to Oregon, we bought cut-over timberland, never thinking about fire danger. As nearly as I can reconstruct my (non)thinking of 40 years ago, I think I assumed that because it rained more and the land was covered in trees, that our chances of being caught in a wildfire was quite low. Our road wasn't wide enough for fire trucks, and it was the only way out. We had trees right next to the house. We had a minimal water supply - in fact we carried water from town in the summertime for the first two years we lived there, until we could afford a well to replace the surface spring we used about 6 months out of the year. And that well only delivered 3 gpm, not nearly enough for fire fighting.

I know better now.

 

[QinReno]

Yeah, definitely given all the fires in CA, OR, WA, ID, and MT over the past 5-years or so, it pays to pick the location of any town for possible settling. Stay out of the woods.

It's gotten so you can barely even find a place in the far west to go during July and August, due to so many fires started by lightning. Then in the fall/winter in CA, it's the high winds exacerbating the problems, with most of the fires apparently started by sparking of wind-blown power lines, or some fool idiot.

Paradise fire first day, winds blowing out along the path of the escape routes:
- https://fsapps.nwcg.gov/afm/data/im...12618-2018312213438_250m_ca-north-000_143.jpg

Last December, not supposed to be fire season, then followed by the mud slides in Santa Barbara:
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Fire

 

[John61CT]

The biggest factor making housing very expensive is plentiful high-salaried jobs and/or access to lots of well-heeled clients for your product/service.

Once you're living off other income streams, whatever they may be, then you're free to reduce cost of living by a lot, just balance with the other factors you value.

 

[Matlock]

Never understood renting myself, when I can buy a small house with a well and septic for under $25K. Worse case, cheap monthly payments and can split costs with someone if necessary. Makes an ok home base, not to mention a place to practice your fix-r-upper skills. I have no comparison to costs in other areas but in the central mid-west lots to choose from if you look. Many small towns have foreclosures that banks are always trying to unload. Maybe not for everyone true enough, still it's workable and cheap.

 

[MrNoodly]

Never understood renting myself...

It goes back to a person's priorities and the tradeoffs they're willing to make. For example, if you landed a great job but it's in a city where you couldn't afford to buy, then renting makes sense. Or, to turn it around, if there's a place with very affordable homes but you can't find a decent job (which is one of the leading reasons housing prices might be low), then buying might not make sense. Or, having your own property might be worth any other tradeoffs.

 

[jacqueg]

Never understood renting myself, when I can buy a small house with a well and septic for under $25K. Worse case, cheap monthly payments and can split costs with someone if necessary. Makes an ok home base, not to mention a place to practice your fix-r-upper skills. I have no comparison to costs in other areas but in the central mid-west lots to choose from if you look. Many small towns have foreclosures that banks are always trying to unload. Maybe not for everyone true enough, still it's workable and cheap.

Whatever state you are in, it sure isn't the West Coast. The only thing you can get for 25K is an older mobile in a trailer park. And that's true in even the small towns.

 

[Dingfelder]

People willing to live in some place that costs 25k in the west probably don't have the credit rating to buy it.

If there is anything you can buy for 25k ...

 

[maki2]

You best bet is to have enough cash to buy a halfway derelict property or unimproved land at a tax sale auction. Then of course you need to have enough money, energy and ability to make it into a liveable home.

Some towns are offering cheap properties with tax breaks for a decade or so. Those will be in the areas of town that are failing to thrive and the property they are offering the prices on are generally not in good condition. There will also be a requirement for the person who purchases it on the low cost deal to get it fixed up within a certain amount of time. Sometimes fix up grant money is offered. There is often an owner occupant requirement for a certain period of time but sometimes they don't care if a developer is the one who is buying it up. They just want it back on the tax roles and off of their hands for liablity.

As far as affordable groceries. It takes a good sized population center to attract stores that have lower prices. They have lower prices because the volume of sales support their ability to buy in larger wholesale quantities. A small town grocery store has higher prices because they don't have a large population base.

If you don't live near a grocery store then you do need to learn the ways to manage you household to keep your food cost lower. You have a big freezer. You have a personal association with a local grower of produce, diary, poultry or meat. You might do something such a buy a half or quarter interest in a cow; then have it butchered and rent a freezer locker to store the meat in. Maybe you keep chickens for the eggs and have a garden to feed yourself and the chickens. You go to a larger town once a month and that is when you get your groceries, you don't go to the store once a week or every couple of days. Or you buy some food items in bulk from the internet and get free delivery.

Property taxes are low in rural areas with few community services.