I've never had to personally raise money for a startup, but I see a lot of the face-to-face meetings starting off as warm email/phone intros. Even if you have to constantly travel to NY/CA/* to meet prospective investors isn't it still a better value to run a business somewhere with a low cost of living?
It's almost never necessary but try telling an investor that. The amount of investors that said no to the start-up I'm currently working at, simply because it was on the East coast (that was literally the only reason given), was simply astonishing. In a world where you can be anywhere in essentially, physically, in less than a day (typically hours domestically) or instantly digitally technology investors would stick their noses up due to physical location.
I love SF but it just didn't make sense at the time and it's still insanely expensive there!
Either they're correct, although there seems to be no logical reason why or any sane rationalization for it, or they're leaving great piles of money on the table for more open minded investors to snatch up, or they're not really in it for the money (retirement hobby, its for social signalling, etc).
Maybe the answer is to come to where the money is for raising and then set an office back home.