in the article i mentioned above about reasons people move to florida and the reasons they leave it… perceived cost was a big reason to move there, and actual cost was a big reason to move away
there’s also probably something to the question of who can move easily. it’s not only expensive, it often means disrupting people’s support network
it’s maybe easy enough when a person’s younger and on their own, but a whole family is likely having a company help pay the way or has decent means of their own
( apparently geographic mobility has been declining since the 50s, and continues to do so )
When we visited Bozeman in 2018, it was hard to find a decent home for sale under $400K. I remember thinking that it was far more expensive than we would have guessed, but it’s a college town and pretty desirable. There were 3-4 bedroom homes with 2-5 acres in the outskirts of town that were going for $750K to over $1.5 million.
It would be interesting to compare that with median population age. As you say, it’s a lot easier to move cross-country when you have no family to bring and everything you own fits into a compact car.
Yah, hence median, not maximum. There will always be fancy places anywhere for a lot more, and median includes all property, not just what is for sale.
I understand what median means. I just find that $150K median housing price rather low figure for that area during the run up to Covid as early as 2018. Maybe 10 years earlier when the real estate market crashed? I even looked at the municipal website and I found that in 2018 the median price was $427K, which seemed to reflect what we saw.
There is one small silver lining to that: the locals in Bozeman (including some of my relatives) were nearly 100% Republican, so their voting strength is now diluted.
