Grants Pass, Medford or Ashland??? (home, buying, taxes)

[AAAplus]

Originally Posted by Fiddlehead

Given your preferences, I would choose Redding, CA over any town in S. Oregon. We will get very cloudy weather in winter, with inversions that last for a couple weeks at a time.

Redding is close to the same terrific scenery, with hot summers, partly cloudy to cloudy winters. Otherwise, the cost of living and culture are pretty similar. Dunsmuir and Mount Shasta city are options too. The will be cloudier than Redding, but not so much as any of the Oregon towns you mention.

in addition to redding, consider reno, nv for lower cost housing and it's also close to the mountains and a small town environment along with lake tahoe

i am not sure why i keep reading on this forum that housing costs are so high in ashland, talent, and the applegate valley. given that ashland is a liberal city, i would think that the liberals running the ashland city council would control land and housing prices so that they're affordable, like in vegas or reno.

[PNW-type-gal]

You make a number of assumptions that are flat-out wrong in the many threads that you bombard. Oregon is not a cheap place - nowhere on the west coast is. It's only by comparison to California prices that anyone really ever called Oregon "cheap." There are many places in the Southwest and Mid-West and South that are FAR cheaper.

Ashland is expensive because it is, in large part, a "boutique" town of retirees and second homes. The festivals are a huge draw. Like any other destination town, that drives prices up. Not to the "Aspen" extent of having to bus in minimum wage workers, but definitely to the extent of squeezing low-income housing.

Applegate Valley has turned into a hobby farm/ hobby winery/ small scale winery locale, which has also driven prices up - there are no jobs in the Applegate Valley outside that, not without driving some distance.

Oregon does have serious land use laws that prevent farm land from being turned into vast housing tracts. While voters have amended the laws a bit, they stay in place because the majority of voters LIKE the idea of keeping cities from being sprawling miles of suburbs.

[Fiddlehead]

Originally Posted by PNW-type-gal

You make a number of assumptions that are flat-out wrong in the many threads that you bombard. Oregon is not a cheap place - nowhere on the west coast is. It's only by comparison to California prices that anyone really ever called Oregon "cheap." There are many places in the Southwest and Mid-West and South that are FAR cheaper.

Ashland is expensive because it is, in large part, a "boutique" town of retirees and second homes. The festivals are a huge draw. Like any other destination town, that drives prices up. Not to the "Aspen" extent of having to bus in minimum wage workers, but definitely to the extent of squeezing low-income housing.

Applegate Valley has turned into a hobby farm/ hobby winery/ small scale winery locale, which has also driven prices up - there are no jobs in the Applegate Valley outside that, not without driving some distance.

Oregon does have serious land use laws that prevent farm land from being turned into vast housing tracts. While voters have amended the laws a bit, they stay in place because the majority of voters LIKE the idea of keeping cities from being sprawling miles of suburbs.

PNW Type gal nailed it. Ashland is definitely a boutique town that appeals especially to people from the SF Bay Area, but also wealthy exurbanites from all over. The secret is out and most of the people who pay $500-$700k for a home or a "farm" are from out of the area. But there are so many people moving in, bargains are hard to find.

[Deezus]

Originally Posted by AAAplus

in addition to redding, consider reno, nv for lower cost housing and it's also close to the mountains and a small town environment along with lake tahoe

i am not sure why i keep reading on this forum that housing costs are so high in ashland, talent, and the applegate valley. given that ashland is a liberal city, i would think that the liberals running the ashland city council would control land and housing prices so that they're affordable, like in vegas or reno.

You couldn't pick two more different cities to compare to Ashland. First off Ashland is a small tourist/retiree/collegetown village of about 20,000. Reno is a small and growing city and Las Vegas is a much, much larger city. Housing is affordable in Nevada cities, because the was few land-use restrictions to building new subdivisions in the desert. There's probably more people in one Vegas suburban development than there is in all of Ashland. Housing was so overbuilt in Vegas that you can pick up bargain foreclosures all over the place after the crash. Ashland on the other hand has strict zoning that prevents building over much of the surrounding farmland and hills--it's part of the way to prevent Ashland from losing it's "charm".

Ashland is a nice town, but it's become too pricey unless you show up from outside the area with money. Talent is alittle less expensive(or used to be) as that's where most of my friends who stayed in the area ended up and has it's own sort of charm. They also mostly all work in Medford, but would rather live close to Ashland. Phoenix is just up the road as well. But the younger people I knew who went to college in Ashland after I did had hard times finding cheap enough housing to live in that town.

Like I said, I liked Ashland, but in some ways it just had too weird a mix of both insularity and smugness in some ways. You have sort of a division between the rich retirees and Californians and the college kids scraping by and the old school locals who never left. The rich hippies didn't seem to like the poor hippies, and the City Council meetings I attended as a journalism/political science student often devolved into farce. Grants Pass seemed like a much more easy-going place and likeable, but it has issues of it's own. Medford always reminded me too much of a town in the Central Valley of California, but you can live comfortably there in suburban style and be close to the rest of the region's attractions.

What I do miss about the area is the great access to the mountains. They aren't as high as the Cascades further north or the Sierra in California, but they're spectacular in their desolation once you drive twenty minutes down a dirt road and usually pretty quiet. Within two hours, you've got the Mt. Ashland, Pilot Rock, Mt. McLoughlin, the Sky Lakes, Mt. Shasta, the Illinois River Valley, the Klamath River, Rogue and Umpqua Rivers, the more remote regions of the Siskiyous, the Marble Mountains, and further away you've got Crater Lake and the Trinity Alps. All great areas to get away from it all...

[AAAplus]

Originally Posted by Deezus

But the younger people I knew who went to college in Ashland after I did had hard times finding cheap enough housing to live in that town.

Like I said, I liked Ashland, but in some ways it just had too weird a mix of both insularity and smugness in some ways. You have sort of a division between the rich retirees and Californians and the college kids scraping by and the old school locals who never left. The rich hippies didn't seem to like the poor hippies, and the City Council meetings I attended as a journalism/political science student often devolved into farce. Grants Pass seemed like a much more easy-going place and likeable, but it has issues of it's own. Medford always reminded me too much of a town in the Central Valley of California, but you can live comfortably there in suburban style and be close to the rest of the region's attractions.

thx for the excellent post !
I had to look up insularity and smugness. sorry to hear this, this same generalization also applies to bend. not so in larger suburbs of san francisco.

too bad that folks can't get along in small towns like ashland

in my travels, one "tourist town" (just as Ashland is a tourist town) where they do get along and embrace diversity is palm springs, probably because of the weather. another is boulder, colorado.

[AAAplus]

Originally Posted by PNW-type-gal

You make a number of assumptions that are flat-out wrong in the many threads that you bombard. Oregon is not a cheap place -

Oregon does have serious land use laws that prevent farm land from being turned into vast housing tracts. While voters have amended the laws a bit, they stay in place because the majority of voters LIKE the idea of keeping cities from being sprawling miles of suburbs.

nevada and places like Austin, TX don't care about sprawl and neither do I.
oregon used to be cheap before the land use laws.

[kapetrich]

Originally Posted by AAAplus

nevada and places like Austin, TX don't care about sprawl and neither do I.
oregon used to be cheap before the land use laws.

Good. I'm sure the state of Nevada and Austin, TX will welcome you into their wonderfully beautiful and oh so sustainable suburban sprawl.

There's a reason Oregon has UGB laws. Hint: It has to do with NOT BECOMING grossly sprawled states like Nevada/California and cities like Austin, TX. (Actually, Oregon was learning from east coasts mistakes....to bad other western states didn't think before they built)

Move along if you don't like it. We don't want your liberal land use law brain infesting our well conserved land.

[backdrifter]

Originally Posted by AAAplus

nevada and places like Austin, TX don't care about sprawl and neither do I.
oregon used to be cheap before the land use laws.

California and Washington used to be cheap too and they DON'T have land use laws like Oregon...

[AAAplus]

Originally Posted by kapetrich

Good. I'm sure the state of Nevada and Austin, TX will welcome you into their wonderfully beautiful and oh so sustainable suburban sprawl.

There's a reason Oregon has UGB laws. Hint: It has to do with NOT BECOMING grossly sprawled states like Nevada/California and cities like Austin, TX. (Actually, Oregon was learning from east coasts mistakes....to bad other western states didn't think before they built)

Move along if you don't like it. We don't want your liberal land use law brain infesting our well conserved land.

some people like suburban sprawl, some people don't. eugene, bend, ashland, medford, portland - they're all sprawling as far as i'm concerned.

what i am more concerned about is taxes and affordable housing, and oregon is difficult for this, especially southern oregon.

[kapetrich]

Originally Posted by AAAplus

some people like suburban sprawl, some people don't. eugene, bend, ashland, medford, portland - they're all sprawling as far as i'm concerned.

what i am more concerned about is taxes and affordable housing, and oregon is difficult for this, especially southern oregon.

Restricting suburban sprawl makes housing more of a finite resource. Therefor, often times, housing prices in areas with strict UGBs will be higher.

That is why you like places in Nevada and TX. They do not have strong UGBs therefor housing, for lack of a better word, is limitless aka extremely cheap, comparably.

There are other factors, but this is the scope we are discussing.

Again, if you like suburban sprawl Oregon is probably not the state for you.

Originally Posted by AAAplus

in my travels, one "tourist town" (just as Ashland is a tourist town) where they do get along and embrace diversity is palm springs, probably because of the weather. another is boulder, colorado.

Really? Palm Springs and Boulder embrace diversity? That won't be close to the first thing I think of when describing those monocultures.

Am I missing your joke, maybe?

Originally Posted by AAAplus

given that ashland is a liberal city, i would think that the liberals running the ashland city council would control land and housing prices so that they're affordable, like in vegas or reno.

You do not seem to understand how this works. Read up on UGB: Here's the broadest overview I could find: Urban growth boundary - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The point is that Vegas and Reno DO NOT control land and development making housing cheaper. Both places are absolutely abhorrent to me, but like you said - and I totally agree - it all comes down to personal taste.

Governments can not DIRECTLY control housing prices in the USA - what are you one of those 'socialists'