If you're not set on living in the city, housing is fantastic in the Pittsburgh area.
I live 20 minutes from Downtown and I bought my house for $74,900 in 2008. 3/2, two car garage and driveway sitting on about 1/8 of an acre.
It blows my mind when I hear how much money people are paying for housing in bigger cities. The salary would need to be significantly higher to make it worth my while to move to a place like SF or NYC to take a job.
Additionally, this area is fairly centrist politically. Sure, it's Democrat heavy but there are a lot of conservative, blue collar Democrats that balance out the urban intellectual Democrats and we have a small but intense Republican population so we never go too far in any direction. That's an intangible thing that is very important to me.
The low cost of living, the low housing costs, the abundance of college educated professionals and the variety of experiences around would make this place attractive to all kinds of people. It could become a startup hub. I'm not sure I want to see that but I'm also not blindly opposed.
I live 20 minutes from Downtown and I bought my house for $74,900 in 2008. 3/2, two car garage and driveway sitting on about 1/8 of an acre.
It blows my mind when I hear how much money people are paying for housing in bigger cities. The salary would need to be significantly higher to make it worth my while to move to a place like SF or NYC to take a job.
Additionally, this area is fairly centrist politically. Sure, it's Democrat heavy but there are a lot of conservative, blue collar Democrats that balance out the urban intellectual Democrats and we have a small but intense Republican population so we never go too far in any direction. That's an intangible thing that is very important to me.
The low cost of living, the low housing costs, the abundance of college educated professionals and the variety of experiences around would make this place attractive to all kinds of people. It could become a startup hub. I'm not sure I want to see that but I'm also not blindly opposed.