#21 through 25. See the picture for scoring.
Sample houses:
21 – Greeley (CO)
https://www.realtor.com/realestatean...-92598?view=qv
22 – Honolulu (HI)
https://www.realtor.com/realestatean...-99594?view=qv
23 – Bay St. Louis (MS)
https://www.realtor.com/realestatean...-66168?view=qv
24 – Marfa (TX)
https://www.realtor.com/realestatean...-98733?view=qv
25 – Denver (CO)
https://www.realtor.com/realestatean...-14766?view=qv
Summary (in reverse order)
25 – Denver (CO) – This is an option of selling our house and buying a smaller condo in our same general neighborhood. My expected advantages here were that it would free up some home equity to produce income, and there’d be no need for exterior maintenance. In the long run, not having a lot of stairs may be necessary, too. The interesting thing about this is that when you sum everything up, it’s no more affordable than keeping our house, and the condo is a less attractive housing option. (My model builds in property taxes, a maintenance amount, and also income from the apartment in my house.) The HOA fee for the condo is pretty high, so you’re still paying for the maintenance indirectly. It’s a nice option because it’s Denver, so it scores high points on my scale, but other than the lack of stairs it offers no advantage at all over staying in my house. This was a good thing to learn.
24 – Marfa (TX) – My wife wants to visit Marfa and is intrigued by it. It’s a little artsy town that’s in southwest Texas, and it’s not near anything. It’s about three hours east of El Paso, three hours southwest of Odessa, and three hours north of Big Bend National Park. It’s pretty high in elevation, so the climate is surprisingly reasonable. The summers are about the same as Denver, and the winters are ten degrees warmer with almost no snow. That’s a win. The thing that’s not a win is that it’s a small town with a hit-or-miss housing stock that’s surprisingly expensive. It’s a bit more affordable than Denver due to low Texas taxes, and the sample house is reasonably nice, but you’d have to get lucky looking for a house there. It’s a better option than I thought from a climate perspective, though.
23 – Bay St. Louis (MS) – I’ve never been here, but a longtime friend of mine lives here and I thought it was kind of interesting. It’s on the Gulf Coast about an hour’s drive east of N’awlin’s. It actually stacks up very well. It’s very affordable, and the winters seem pretty darn nice. The summers are similar to Denver and notably more humid, as one might expect. The town leans heavily right politically for however you value that. I can’t say that I’m wowed by the architecture there, but there’s a good selection of houses that would work for me. I really wasn’t expecting much out of this place, so it surprised me positively.
And by the way, what’s the deal with the big open space in that sample house? It looks like it’s a small auto showroom or something. I first thought it was a patio, but it appears to be indoor space.
22 – Honolulu (HI) – Okay, I’ll say up front that I’m kind of suspicious here, and it turns out that my suspicion was correct. Honolulu should be ranked a lot lower for a reason that’s unique to the locale. I’ve always heard that Honolulu is expensive, and you may recall that Hilo, HI, was a non-competitive #74 in the rankings (though it too graded out as being affordable and it’s big problem was housing stock). So something was amiss and I found it in the fine print.
Obviously the climate is a winner here other than humidity – the January lows are 65 and the July highs are 85.
So back to the pricing. The condo seems very reasonably priced, and I figured out why. In the fine print, it says it’s a “leasehold” condo. Doing a little digging, leaseholds date back to the days when the King of Hawaii owned all of the land. They would lease the right to build on the land, but at the end of the lease the landowner owned whatever was on the property and they took it all. So if you buy a leasehold property, you own it, but essentially the value goes to zero when the leasehold ends. Your house or condo goes free and clear to whoever owns the land.
So the reason that this property seems affordable is likely because there’s not much longer on the leasehold team, so you’re essentially paying to buy it when it’s really just rent and you’ll lose the entire investment in a few years. Apparently a lot of times the landowner will negotiate a new lease when it ends, but that’s a cost that you have no control over, and if they want your condo (or house), they just take it. (Southern California has a similar but slightly different system on a lot of their coastal real estate, which is why it’s so high. But in their model you pay a monthly “land lease”.) I looked at some other places and they would often say how much longer was on the leasehold because that's a massive driver of the value. This place is a little skeezy in not mentioning it.
My initial thinking is that this system is a complete and total ripoff, and it is. But in thinking about it more, there’s a weird advantage to it for someone like me (or rather, someone 15 years older than me). I’ve got no kids and I don’t really care about leaving an inheritance to anybody, so someone like me can buy a condo with a relatively short lease as long as it’ll last the rest of my life, and I'll pay a discounted price for it. If I’m in my 70s at some point and want to move to Hawaii, I just find a place with a 15-year leasehold term remaining (with the appropriately discounted price) and make a bet that the leasehold will outlive me. So in looking at it, it’s a terrible deal for somebody under age 60 or whatever, but it’s a pretty good deal for a person who’s elderly and doesn't care about leaving an estate. Very weird. I will tuck that information into my back pocket for a couple of decades.
21 – Greeley (CO) – It’s notably more affordable than Denver, primarily due to inexpensive housing. But the climate is a slight downgrade with slightly colder winters and hotter summers, albeit with 1/3 less snow. I had to compromise on the housing sample and pick a house with a basement, so the housing stock’s not a great fit. While this ranks pretty high, the advantages of moving there from Denver are purely financial, and everything else is a bit of a downgrade. Not really worth it, in my opinion.