Living large in a small town
Published: September 7, 2005
Living in Queens and riding a crammed subway into Manhattan each day for work, Luis Rivera and Beth Gissinger-Rivera personified New Yorkers’ resigned acceptance to the hassles and travails of life in one of the world’s biggest cities.
But the more Rivera, 34 and a native New Yorker, visited his then-fiancee’s family in small-town Massachusetts, the more he started questioning why he was putting up with the expense, the crowds, and the overall irritation of daily life in the Big Apple.
”I just fell in love with how easy everything is out here,” Rivera said, speaking from the deck of his home in Fairhaven, Mass. ”Growing up, I thought New York was how the rest of the world lived. But everything just seemed to be so much easier out here.”
For years, career mobility and security meant moving to larger cities, living in the sticks was a death knell for promising professionals, and small communities were drained of young adults heading to major metropolitan areas for jobs. Now, however, smaller cities and towns, aided by advances in technology and lower housing prices, are luring away urban professionals seeking a better life.
”There are a lot of people out there, saddled with high mortgages on the coast, saying they can do sophisticated work from the boonies,” said Rich Karlgaard, publisher of Forbes magazine and author of ”Life 2.0: How People Across America Are Transforming Their Lives by Finding the Where of Their Happiness.”
While one can argue about the lifestyle benefits of the big city vs. rural areas, the economics of such a move are clear. According to a housing comparison by real estate agent Coldwell Banker, a home that costs $450,000 in Queens, N.Y., costs $234,999 in Portland, Maine, $180,030 in Bozeman, Mont., and just $170,130 in Des Moines.
For couples like Rivera and Gissinger-Rivera, that’s the difference between home ownership and lifelong renting. For those who already own property in a big city, downsizing to a smaller town can mean big bucks in the current housing market.
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