Liberal cities with snow / less expensive real estate? (lofts, condos)
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Right now I live in Seattle, which I love, except for two things . . .
1. No snow! I miss having snowy winters. I miss it a lot.
2. Crazy real estate prices. I'm saving up so I can buy a home eventually, but in all honesty I don't think I will ever be able to afford the "average" or even "below average" home prices in Seattle.
Now I'm wondering if I should move (eventually)? What are some liberal cities that have snow and cheaper housing?
Please don't post if you don't have anything useful to say.
If you posted that you were looking for a conservative city I wouldn't come in making snarky, passive-aggressive comments about conservatives, and I ask that you show the same level of respect.
Actually Detroit isn't a bad suggestion. I have a friend who lives in Corktown (couple miles from downtown) and she paid 3K for her house. The neighborhood seems to be up and coming, although slowly. Lot of nice condos/lofts downtown as well, if you have 100k to spend. If you can find work in your field, Detroit might be worth looking into.
Snarky comments aside, there are some affordable and livable homes in and around Detroit. We also just had the snowiest January on record. Just a little over 2 and a half feet of snow.
Also, it's kind of exaggeration that Detroit is liberal. It's liberal to a point, but there's many other cities that I would think have more obvious liberal qualities. SE Michigan as a whole is pretty moderate. You can easily find people who lean towards either side of the spectrum depending on the neighborhood/suburb(s). Suburbs like Royal Oak and Ferndale tend to attract the more liberal crowd. Ann Arbor also attracts a fair amount of progressive thinkers, however, the city itself is relatively expensive.
Minneapolis and/or St. Paul would fit this bill to a tee since the cities themselves tend to be liberal and the real estate costs tend to be more affordable compared with the coasts. Chicago would be another option although it is more expensive (probably not as much as Seattle though).
I can't stop singing the praises of Minneapolis. It's very similar to Seattle, but snowy! It's super progressive, very artsy, great coffee, great restaurants, and surprisingly diverse. Though MPLS is cheaper than Seattle, it's around the national average in terms of cost of living.
I'd recommend Pittsburgh second. It's probably one of the most underrated cities in the country. Though Pitt is getting more expensive, you can still get a nice house for a steel . If you'd like a smaller city, Madison, Rochester, Albany, and Ann Arbor are all nice and inexpensive.
Thanks for your replies! I will look into Detroit further, all I really know about it is the recent bankruptcy and the enormous amount of empty houses, which makes me leery. But then again, the ultimate buyer's market, right?
I was actually thinking about Minneapolis / St. Paul because that's where all my extended family lives. (My parents were born in Minnesota, though they moved away before I was born.) Really lovely forests and lakes, too.
East Lansing MI could work, as well as Lansing neighborhoods near East Lansing. Check out other Big 10 college towns/cities too. Columbus OH would be the biggest of the bunch.
Another city that might not have shown up on your radar is Salt Lake City. Yep...really. It's a rather liberal city with a Democratic Mayor and 5 out of 7 City Council seats are Democrats. The better walkable/centralized neighborhoods on the east side such as The Avenues, 9th and 9th, 15th and 15th, Sugar House, Federal Heights, Liberty Park and Harvard-Yale have home prices averaging in the 180K-300K range.
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. If you'd like a smaller city, Madison, Rochester, Albany, and Ann Arbor are all nice and inexpensive.
