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Comment by rswerve | Hacker News Reader

College towns. Pick some states, and go visit towns with colleges in them. They'll have restaurants and groceries, and those faculty kids have to go to school somewhere. Internet should be passable, too. They won't be the cheapest small town option, but houses should come in well below a million bucks.

The one town you mention, Lancaster, PA, is a model of the type.

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It really depends on the atmosphere you want. College towns are great in many ways, with lots of interesting things to do and a lot of cultural events.

However, a lot of people move to college towns and don't realize/remember what college kids are like... they will be noisy at night, sometimes destroy property, throw parties, do stupid pranks... it isn't for everybody

Most of that kind of thing is often limited to a fairly limited area. Worth learning where those areas are, though.

Yeah, the student ghetto. Regular folks live in the college-town-burbs.

You can always organize with the other homeowners to curtail the college's operations! Seems to be a popular strategy.

Slowly suffocate the golden goose! Ever popular indeed.

Another option is those towns that are formed around some activity like skiing, hiking or surfing(Never surfed but I think it applies here also). They might be not cheap as some random rural towns but atmosphere and services are very good.

I have a relative who lived in Lancaster. She liked it. I visited there once and it seemed nice but I was only there for a few days. Also her house was huge.

It's easy to recognize and avoid the student neighborhoods. Find out where the professors and doctors live. Or even the graduate students -- not as wealthy but tend to be quite well behaved. Many are raising families while in grad school.

I live in a college town -- mid sized city in the shadow of a major university in the Midwest. It has everything the OP wants, walking distance to supermarket and shops, easy to get around by bike, enough of an economy thanks to the university and hospitals.

Agree. Still in love with Lawrence, KS (University of Kansas). If you can deal with the weather. :-(

College towns often have plenty of live music coming through with regularity, art, people with more open minds? (I don't mean to start a debate with the last point, just my preference perhaps.)

Lawrence works too because you're 30 or 45 minutes from a big city (Kansas City) so you can get your REI or IKEA on if you need to.

Lincoln, Nebraska is another near me (although I have not lived there) that is within 45 minutes of Omaha.

Had lunch in Iowa City and it looked comparable. An afternoon in Columbia, Missouri and it looked appealing as well.

Lawrence is nice, I lived near downtown for cheap, was able to walk most of the time. There was a very active music scene- I was an in-house engineer at one of the recording studios there.

Columbia is also nice, but a little more spread out. Ames IA, Tulsa, Champaign-Urbana, Ann Arbor…

Columbia's not bad. But it's 2 hours from KC or St Louis, which is a haul for an Apple Store. The airport's not bad actually, but you always are connecting through DFW or ORD, so the layover is just a thing. Flying into STL is still followed by a two hour drive, so never worth it.

Athens, GA was an amazing town to live in. Amazing live music scene. Great food. And big enough to have neighborhoods for the undergrads that you could avoid.

Living ~1hr from ATL was also a luxury - you fly direct everywhere on Delta.

This is where it's at. College towns are the best. They are the gems. Smaller, but with a large group of people from all over, you get that diversity you probably want. With people from all over, you get great food from all over, languages, neat people, art, etc.

Another college town I like is Eugene, or Ellensberg. Flagstaff maybe? Depends on your climate, look for colleges with maybe 10k-ish students? Another one that I can't stand because of the weather is Champagne Urbana. 10 minute drive out from town, and you're in farmland.

Like Eugene, Corvallis is very nice. There’s decent food, and houses are a lot cheaper than Portland. It’s a lot closer to Portland on days you want to drive up, which is a plus.

Yeah, that's about the best. There's a lot of college towns that are within driving distance of a major city (like <2hrs), and that really opens it up. If you want the culture of a big city but small town living, college town! Concerts will go to Portland, and sometimes Eugene, but not always, so you can just go up and see them in Portland for example.

Agree, Corvallis rocks. Beautiful weather, decent food, close to cities, mountains, the coast. Not sure where the down votes are coming from, maybe to stop you from letting the secret out?

Yeah I agree. I honestly love central Oregon. Grants Pass in particular is wonderful. And then down in that Medford Ashland Rogue River Valley area too. US 199 from Grant's Pass to Crescent City CA is possibly the most gorgeous drive in the US IMHO. And Crescent City CA has the redwoods all over, and you can continue to Eureka, which is also nice, and fairly cheap compared to the rest of california. It smells like green and wet there, but not in a bad way. Very little snow. Central oregon literally looks like the shire with the rolling hills and mountains. I'd buy there.

I grew up in a college town and I can highly recommend. I grew up with kids of professors and because of that (and, of course, my own parents) had a great academic environment. Schools in college towns often punch above their weight.

Another benefit is access to cultural benefits that wouldn’t normally be available, like great libraries and concerts and orchestras (often free). Check out Pullman, WA as another example.

>College towns. Pick some states, and go visit towns with colleges in them.

This is pretty much the only answer for the US. Small independent towns have ceased to exist because they have no reason to. But the legacy of land grant universities across the US has left plenty of towns like Gainesville, Ames, Athens, Boulder, Asheville, Chattanooga, Eugene, Laramie, College Station, etc. etc. that are fantastic places to live and have strong real estate markets.

This is a great answer. The two college towns near me also happen to be home to all the best restaurants, and are both far more walkable than the nearest city's downtown area.

Not sure that the real estate is going to be all that cheap, though.

Home prices are pretty high in most nicer college towns.

This is true, but it's on a sliding scale. I grew up in a town in Idaho, 100 miles from an interstate. I've lived in tech cities (SF, Austin) and now live in Ann Arbor. (Which, along with Chapel Hill, is basically the definition of "nicer college town.") So I've seen all sides of this.

It's true that housing isn't cheap. The difference is what you get for the cost. What I paid for my house in Ann Arbor would buy a house in Austin—but it would be a run-down, dated, small house without much in walking distance and a "who knows?" school assignment. Here in a "nicer college town," we live on more than an acre just outside town, still have top notch schools, and my wife's commute to her job at the hospital is only 10 minutes. (Far from the partying students mentioned earlier.)

Housing values are also a little more stable—a sudden tech downturn could strand you underwater in that Austin house. It takes a lot more to sap demand for housing in a university community, especially one with a big teaching hospital system. Add to that the value of a town having a demonstrated track record of caring about its schools. That doesn't grow on trees.

I guess, yes: housing prices are high. Certainly when you compare to towns like the one where I grew up. But if you compare to urban areas and high-end suburbs, then the value-for-money trade is way better, even in really nice college towns.

FWIW, I loved Iowa City when we were looking, and that probably would have been an even better money-for-value trade. Wife is a medical resident, so we were picking based on more than just lifestyle, and landed in Michigan.

Totally agree on college towns. Just need to make sure you don’t buy a house next door to a fraternity or established party house.

I second this. Close to the Bay Area you have UC Santa Cruz and UC Davis… very different vibes but both will have areas with homes <$1M.

Not a college town but also in California are Sacramento, Ventura, San Luis Obispo (CalPoly but I wouldn’t say college town), and San Diego (UCSD but not a college town). The latter three are beach towns if you like temperate climate. Sac doesn’t get too cold but it does get very hot. All have nice downtowns (depending on what you want) and don’t require a car.

You’ll have CA high taxes and real estate probably cost double or triple what it would in the mid-West but a fraction of LA or Bay Area.

I'm from Lancaster and I don't really consider the city a college town.

State College PA is a college town.

Lancaster is just a nice small city with a few colleges in it.

I agree it isn't a true "college town" but I think with the gentrification and the art college it feels more like a college town than say Carlisle that also has one main college. I think it also has a lot of the cultural diversity that you'd expect from a bigger college town. But in either case, it is great!

Yeah specifically what I mean is that the median age in Lancaster is 33 and the median age in State College is 21.

So even if there are schools there the feel is more young adult than college student.

Lancaster would be a different place without F&M. I've always thought college town meant the college supported most if not all of the local population, something like West Chester, the town would still exist without WCU but it would be just like Downingtown then, nothing super special. I think lancaster would be in a very similar spot.

F&M is not actually among the top employers [0]. Whereas in State College, Penn State is the top employer by a ridiculous margin [1].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lancaster,_Pennsylvania#Econom...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_College,_Pennsylvania#Ec...

Put another way: State College has a permanent population of 40,000. Penn State at State College employs 27,000 people (already over half of the population). And during the school year there are 46,000 undergraduates in the main campus. So over 100% of the permanent population are associated with the school during the school year.

In contrast: Lancaster City has ~60,000 population, F&M employs ~1100 [0] and F&M has 2400 students. That accounts for 5% of the population during the school year and <2% of the population permanently.

[0] https://www.linkedin.com/school/franklin-&-marshall-college/

You're forgetting that West Chester is the county seat of Chester County PA, the fastest growing and richest county in the entire state (and usually somewhere in the top 25-40 of the US.) So, you have the county courthouse and all the typical government stuff, which Downingtown lacks.

Lancaster is much larger than either, though different cities have varying land areas they count. Lancaster is also the seat of its same named county.

I look at 'college town' as defining somewhere where school(s) are located, and the population count of 18-24 makes up almost 50% of the population. Newark, DE (University of Delaware) and Bloomsburg, PA (Bloomsburg U) seem to fit that better.

please don't price students out of college towns...

Doesn’t US students mostly live in dorms…?

The first year, yeah. After that, people start moving out. I don’t know anybody who lived in a dorm from the third year onward.

But yeah, what poor college students trying to get a start on life and grad students making pocket change really need is some 400k/year tech workers to flood into their town, say “wow! Only 2500 a month!” and make it impossible to live anywhere.

Also, dorms are insanely expensive. And wanting to be near noisy, drunk, high college kids as an unaffiliated adult is honestly just weird.

Not really sure what to respond. Should people in the US not be free to move to any town they want? Seems like an odd take IMO.

You can move wherever you want. But on a forum where people frequently talk about the harm humans do, I think advising people to move to an area that exists basically for people who are just struggling to start their adult life seems like a bad move.

Moving somewhere because you like the scenery, the food, whatever is fine. Moving there because there’s a college while you’re 15 years out of college is just strange.

I guess that's how they managed to screw up Creste Butte, CO. Pandemic + WFH, opportunities to move somewhere with nice scenery and not enough infrastructure to support a whole score of newcomers.

Residence halls are generally competitively priced, and is often cheaper than comparable housing off campus. Residence halls are more expensive than they used to be, but a lot of that is due to the type of housing that students are demanding. University-owned housing isn't a profit center, it's only priced to cover the costs of providing it.

Is that really true in college towns? My experience (at an urban university campus that required a year in the dorms) was that the dorms and meal plans were staggeringly expensive, but the cheaper off-campus housing tended to be in older homes that had seen some very hard use as students came and went. So maybe the dorm price would be comparable with a brand-new high-rise apartment, but students didn't really need that.

Off-campus housing often looks cheaper, but that's because you're often comparing apples to oranges. As you mention, the age of the property and how well it's been maintained often varies significantly. But most places you rent off-campus don't include utilities. --That old house in the Midwest or Northeast might look cheap compared to on-campus housing in August, but your electricity and gas bills in the fall and winter will quickly change your calculations.

Another thing to keep in mind is that, on average, students living on campus have higher GPAs, are less likely to drop out, are more likely to finish on time, feel a greater sense of social belonging, and are more likely to participate in extracurricular activities. Those benefits need to be factored in as well. There have been a number of studies about this, here's a summary of one of them: https://studentlife.uoregon.edu/student-success-and-housing-....

When it comes to meal plans, if you have your own kitchen then yes, you definitely CAN eat cheaper, but I don't know many college students who actually spend much time planning their meals, buying in bulk, and actually cooking the majority of their meals from scratch. Realistically they end up eating a lot of frozen dinners and eating out - especially for lunch when they're on campus anyway. When I look at the school I went to, their unlimited meal plan ends up costing about $9/meal on average, which is a lot, but that's 3 hot meals a day, all you can eat, and you don't have to spend time buying the ingredients, cooking the food, and cleaning up after yourself.

Those eight guys I knew who split the rickety house with the two ovens whose pilot lights kept going out had plenty of social belonging. There's a huge racket in convincing freshmen to spend money they don't have, in order to live someplace just as nice as their parents had after they spent 20 or more years improving it.

You're right about cooking, at least in my experience, but you have to take a first step sometime. I grew up in the 90s with two working parents who kept different hours, and didn't learn to cook until my late 20s. But I think people's priorities are shifting, especially now that wfh is more normal.

> Another thing to keep in mind is that, on average, students living on campus have higher GPAs, are less likely to drop out, are more likely to finish on time, feel a greater sense of social belonging, and are more likely to participate in extracurricular activities. Those benefits need to be factored in as well.

The ones that don't kill themselves, sure. There's also a higher rate of suicide, alcoholism, reported sexual assaults by both sexes, drug use, etc. but those statistics don't make it to pamphlets for obvious reasons. Living on-campus is more of an amplifier of opportunities and failures. It expands the range of scenarios; it doesn't raise the floor for everyone. If you're already successful and can handle yourself, you'll benefit from the proximity of those opportunities while residing on or close too a college campus. If you're an emotional wreck or don't know your own values (which describes many people in college), then anything aside from sheer force of will would won't be of much help and living on campus may interfere with that.

My friends were generally emotional wrecks and hugely into alcohol, but they survived and have productive lives now. They weren't made of fine Waterford crystal.

> University-owned housing isn't a profit center, it's only priced to cover the costs of providing it.

That's news to me. The university charged me three times as much as I ended up paying off campus later (in a much better location).

No? In the “college towns” described, rent is far cheaper than dorm costs.

15 years ago, dorm costs were >$1100/mo, and rent was $550 where I lived, 10 minutes from the university.

Varies widely. Size of school, public/private, urban vs rural location, cost and availability of surrounding housing.

You'll hear the opposite refrain where I live, as the expansion of the university prices locals out of rented accommodation.

College students tend to live in apartments or housing focused on college students where few other people want to live because of noise problems. Other people living in other areas of a college town are critically important for the health of a town, or else basically everything cannot exist while the student population is away.

It's the opposite where I am: landlords raising rates to capture more of those sweet student loan dollars. The policy of making access to credit cheap and ubiquitous for students has led to drastic growth in rents (in addition to a large expansion in college amenities and administration). That's what's pricing out locals: students paying for housing with borrowed money.

College towns could - crazy thought - build more housing for everyone who wants to live there. We even have the technology to stack dwelling units vertically to take advantage of scarce land!

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