True, although every city I mentioned has plenty of fine restaurants. Different stroke for different folks.
Places that are LCOL are that way because they aren't super desirable in general.
Agreed space is nice, but I have no idea what I would do with 6000 SF- what do you do with all the rooms? Even in a LCOL area, you have to paint it, clean it, heat it, cool it. I would probably downsize in a LCOL area to 2 or 3k SF and retire earlier...
Houston is the 4th largest city. Chicago is the third largest city. Dallas metro is also huge, not sure where it ranks exactly.
These places aren’t cheap because people don’t want to live there. People obviously do, that’s why these are the largest cities in the US. The difference is that they are very flat and have continued to grow outside the city boundaries and there is plenty of land available to continue building. The physical terrain is essentially amenable to keep extending outside.
The argument that no one wants to live there is weird. I mean…denver is tiny compared to Houston, Dallas and Chicago. In fact, look at immigration data, California cities have high immigration out into places like Houston and Dallas which are amongst the fastest growing large cities. Follow the money - google how many fortune 500 companies moved to Texas in the last 3-5 years.
So is California really that great when a lot of people are moving out of it to places like boise, austin, Dallas, Atlanta?
And 6000 sqft is nice to have. We often have large gatherings with 15-20 guests at our home - maybe once every other month. The kids get their own play area, the adults have their own area. We often have movie nights in our home with friends in our home theater and we often host game night for several families. Our finished basement is set for entertainment - movie theater, air hockey, basketball hoops, ping pong table, VR gaming set up. Also whenever our family visits, they would stay here. My childhood friend whose fellowship is 3 hours away comes by every 1-2 months and he spends weekends here. Whenever my parents visit, they stay here for months. When my wife’s parents will be here from pakistan, they will stay here, throw in her 2 sisters, then that’s more people. If my sister visits, she will stay here with her 2 kids. We have 6 bedrooms, right now we can fit everyone in our home, once we have 3 kids and all these people visiting, honestly we will start running out of rooms then as well 😂
We’re not outdoors people. I hate hiking, i hate being in the heat. i love central air conditioning. Our entertainment is socializing with friends, we have at least 4-5 monthly events with people. Like today was a movie night with 3 families to watch this new Indian movie that just came out. Day before yesterday my wife hosted her entire clinic for dinner at our home, that was a dozen people. That’s our entertainment.
The last time i tried to ski, i thought i was going to break something even on the bunny slopes. Fyi we have skiing where i live an hour or so away, but it’s just not something I’m dying to do.
Things i cared about when moving last year - job opportunities, low cost of living, excellent school district, major city 1M+ population, things to do, excellent malpractice environment, low volume rural ER within 1 hour of this excellent school district in a large city. So yeah…different strokes for different folks.