Absolutely! For the past several years one of our hobbies has been looking at places on Zillow with the hope that someday in the not so distant future we will escape the overpriced liberal hell hole we currently live in. Typically when my wife finds a house that looks like a castle for a super reasonable price there is always a reason.
When you find a cheap house that looks very nice in other places... it will often be located in a place where English speaking white people make up less than 30% of the population and your chances of being murdered, raped, assaulted burglarized or robbed are several times the national average.
Then there are the places with high property taxes. Upstate New York has all sorts of beautiful cheap places, but the property taxes on a house that is practically being given away will often be over $10,000 a year.
Then there are the places with intolerable climates. Places where a 3rd or more of the year it is typically in the 90s with high humidity, or in the 100s with low humidity. Not to mention places where the winters are super cold, or places where it drizzles nearly every day for approximately 9 months out of the year. Then there are the places that are so remote that it takes you two hours to drive to a Walmart.
So true. I inherited a lovely place in one of those high-tax areas. I love being there, but I have resisted the temptation to improve the property. The taxes are already crazy and I’m not willing to have it re-assessed out of affordability. That said, taxes will go up now due to COVID. The county has experienced a huge loss of revenue, as has the state. Much of the gap will be made up on the backs of property owners.
Here is a helpful site to look up data about cities and towns that a real estate agent may not be able to say: www.city-data.com
The maps zoom in on individual zip codes and sometimes smaller zones than that, with detailed demographic info, such as avg sale price, percentage single family homes, percentage males/females, racial pie chart, percentage foreign-born, average commute time, education and income levels, avg temperatures and rainfall, etc. Many other features