We have seen the "where to live" question play out in our own family over the last 50 years. Our parents spent their earlier adult lives on the east coast, Bob's in the Hampton Roads and later DC area (Bob's dad worked for the forerunner of NASA and then NASA) and my parents in Pennsylvania and NJ. At retirement Bob's mom moved to San Di…
We have seen the "where to live" question play out in our own family over the last 50 years. Our parents spent their earlier adult lives on the east coast, Bob's in the Hampton Roads and later DC area (Bob's dad worked for the forerunner of NASA and then NASA) and my parents in Pennsylvania and NJ. At retirement Bob's mom moved to San Diego and my parents moved to Colorado where Bob and I moved in 1970 shortly after we married. We have been here ever since and raised our two daughters here. Both chose to move elsewhere for college and stayed in those areas, our older daughter in the Seattle area and our younger one first in Chicago and then in Madison, WI. For our parents and for Bob and me, there were no questions about affordability of the area where we wanted to live. We all had lots of choices. In the 1970's it was no problem for people to find affordable homes in either California or Colorado. My parents bought a single family home for $54,000 in 1977 in Boulder. Houses like that (1950's ranch with 1300 sq ft.) are now selling for around a million dollars. Staggering. Skip forward to the 2010's and our older daughter and her husband wanted a house that didn't break the bank and to do that had to move to a place south of Seattle (Federal Heights) with a long commute for her to her job north of downtown Seattle. Our younger daughter and her husband decided on Madison, WI which had jobs for both of them and still affordable housing. Now our family situation has become more complicated. Our younger daughter sadly died two years ago of breast cancer and our older daughter and her husband are divorcing. The house they bought in Federal Heights is now worth double what they paid for it which sounds like a windfall but of course it also means that everything else has also gone up in price. Even with a well paying job and a desire for a smaller house, there simply are no houses for sale anywhere with a reasonable commute to her job at a price that she can afford which is probably in the range of $500,000. So, now she is thinking of moving. The Boulder area where she grew up is as bad as Seattle for affordable housing. She is thinking of places like the Raleigh Durham area where housing is still affordable and there are jobs in her field. But she is concerned about living so far from us. And we don't want to move. We have a lifetime's worth of friends here and a home we built for our retirement in a still lovely rural area where we can forget about the massive influx of people to the Front Range and with a view that goes from Pikes Peak to the Never Summer Range at the north end of Rocky Mountain National Park. So far we are doing fine but I do worry about the time when things get harder and I wish our daughter could find a place closer to us or that she could find a place in an area where we wouldn't mind moving in the future. It's a problem we never anticipated.
Thank you very much for this moving and richly detailed account. (One of my lessons from decades in the reporting business: everyone's story is interesting.) And the details of the multi-generational choices in your household really highlight the effects that *real estate prices* are having on life decisions. Again thanks.
We have seen the "where to live" question play out in our own family over the last 50 years. Our parents spent their earlier adult lives on the east coast, Bob's in the Hampton Roads and later DC area (Bob's dad worked for the forerunner of NASA and then NASA) and my parents in Pennsylvania and NJ. At retirement Bob's mom moved to San Diego and my parents moved to Colorado where Bob and I moved in 1970 shortly after we married. We have been here ever since and raised our two daughters here. Both chose to move elsewhere for college and stayed in those areas, our older daughter in the Seattle area and our younger one first in Chicago and then in Madison, WI. For our parents and for Bob and me, there were no questions about affordability of the area where we wanted to live. We all had lots of choices. In the 1970's it was no problem for people to find affordable homes in either California or Colorado. My parents bought a single family home for $54,000 in 1977 in Boulder. Houses like that (1950's ranch with 1300 sq ft.) are now selling for around a million dollars. Staggering. Skip forward to the 2010's and our older daughter and her husband wanted a house that didn't break the bank and to do that had to move to a place south of Seattle (Federal Heights) with a long commute for her to her job north of downtown Seattle. Our younger daughter and her husband decided on Madison, WI which had jobs for both of them and still affordable housing. Now our family situation has become more complicated. Our younger daughter sadly died two years ago of breast cancer and our older daughter and her husband are divorcing. The house they bought in Federal Heights is now worth double what they paid for it which sounds like a windfall but of course it also means that everything else has also gone up in price. Even with a well paying job and a desire for a smaller house, there simply are no houses for sale anywhere with a reasonable commute to her job at a price that she can afford which is probably in the range of $500,000. So, now she is thinking of moving. The Boulder area where she grew up is as bad as Seattle for affordable housing. She is thinking of places like the Raleigh Durham area where housing is still affordable and there are jobs in her field. But she is concerned about living so far from us. And we don't want to move. We have a lifetime's worth of friends here and a home we built for our retirement in a still lovely rural area where we can forget about the massive influx of people to the Front Range and with a view that goes from Pikes Peak to the Never Summer Range at the north end of Rocky Mountain National Park. So far we are doing fine but I do worry about the time when things get harder and I wish our daughter could find a place closer to us or that she could find a place in an area where we wouldn't mind moving in the future. It's a problem we never anticipated.
Thank you very much for this moving and richly detailed account. (One of my lessons from decades in the reporting business: everyone's story is interesting.) And the details of the multi-generational choices in your household really highlight the effects that *real estate prices* are having on life decisions. Again thanks.