Your friends should move to Luzerne County, only about an hour away. I pay about $600/year on a 4 bedroom (fixer-upper, but livable) on 5 acres. It’s a vacation home for me, but if I wanted to trim my expenses, it would be an attractive primary residence.
That is where I live.
The worst counties to live in eastern PA are Montgomery, Delaware, and Philadelphia (duh) counties. Bucks is still more reasonable than those counties, to say nothing of Central NJ.
Monroe County, of course, is a dumping ground for ghetto dwellers suckered in by no-money-down cheap housing advertised on the NY subway system.
Wow. I have a very nice house on almost 4 acres in Chester County and I pay 8k in taxes.