devinmarieb t1_ja2vpld wrote on February 26, 2023 at 1:04 PM

Reply to comment by temporaryCognition in My partner and I are thinking about moving to Rhode Island by temporaryCognition

What are you actually looking for though? RI and CT have opportunities that range from being a 5 minute drive from a small city, to living in suburbs, to living quite rural. If you want to be within a 10 minute drive to a downtown as well as close to the water, yeah, that’s going to be expensive. I live just over the border of the Providence line (I own) and I occasionally look at Zillow for funsies and it’s crazy to me that I could theoretically rent my house for 2300 which is the rate in my neighborhood (I pay 1500 for my mortgage, bought in 2021). New England is an expensive place to rent in. We have a shit load of great colleges that are geared toward (let’s be real) rich white kids, and their parents will pay $$$ to rent for them, driving up prices. We have low crime, great schools, good hospitals…and in RI, you’re like an hour-ish from Boston, one to two hours from Cape Cod, three hours from NYC, and can drive to New Hampshire or Vermont for weekend mountain getaways, or up to Maine for a foodie weekend in Portland. Sorry for the long post, but I think it’s probably worth understanding that New England is not some secret place no one knows about. It’s a huge rich person summer playground depending on where you are. It can still be quite affordable in a lot of areas, but it’s going to be incredibly hard to find those opportunities from the west coast, because as someone else mentioned, everything here is “I know a guy who knows a guy who knows a guy.” And just so you know where I’m coming from, I’ve lived in Maine, Vermont, Massachusetts, and now Rhode Island. If you think you might be moving to New England for the long haul, RI is, imo, probably the best investment just because of how centrally located it is from the major cities in the northeast. Much much easier to be here if you have the ability to WFH from one of the major cities.

temporaryCognition OP t1_ja482gu wrote on February 26, 2023 at 6:51 PM

I'm from Maui so both the rents going up for rich white people and the I know a guy who knows a guy makes sense to me. Eventually we're interested in buying a house that's maybe suburban to rural. That's where I would prefer to live. I would bite the bullet and live in the city though. From what you've told me I might be better off renting for a while and just visiting a lot of the areas I'm interested in before just buying a house.

devinmarieb t1_ja4oke3 wrote on February 26, 2023 at 8:41 PM

Yeah for sure. I’ve lived in 5 states (Colorado too) and two other countries on two other continents. New England isn’t my absolute favorite, but it does have a quaint vibe, and if you have even middle class money, it’s wonderful. RI is just south enough that winters aren’t terrible (we barely got snow this year). If you’re young, living right near downtown Providence or in Newport might be super fun, but if you consider buying in the future, there’s so many cute small towns that are still not far from everything. Honestly in the summer, all the cute little villages in the small coastal towns are just as popular as “the city.” IMO, one year is not enough time to do everything and make a decision about staying long term or not. Like I said, Boston, the Cape, NYC, the mountains and coastal Maine are all things you’d probably want to check out too.