All Forum Posts by: Karl B.

Have you thought about Deleware? Woods, ocean, lakes, etc.

Land costs can be very low.

For investments there are many developer opportunities, beach rentals, Baltimore, Philly, New Jersey are not that far. 

Retirement taxes are favorable also.

Here's a different suggestion - Hawaii (Big Island) 

Inexpensive land - You can get a forested/cleared acre on the west side for not that much, 10k-30k 

Outdoors - Entire island is a hiking spot, there's rainforests, volcanoes, deserts, and 10k ft high mountains  

Waves - Big island doesn't have as many breaks as the other islands but its still 10x better than mainland

Nice people - Aloha spirit

Well, the Pensacola, FL keyword triggered me to this post and I enjoyed reading it. The gulf doesn't have big waves but since you put a lake in that statement I think it would fit the bill. Not overly mountainous  but nice forests and hiking available. Could be a good option for you, land is cheap and available in bulk outside of town a bit. Good option, check it out. 

As @Eddie Silva mentioned we do get quite a bit of rain here, but not always huge amounts of rain (winter 16/17 was pretty bad though). The further east you go the more dry weather you get. I have no idea what type of work you're looking to do but if location doesn't matter a great place to get good weather, water, hiking, biking, etc is Hood River, OR.   You might look into Bend, OR as well but it's growing and getting more expensive (nowhere near L.A. expensive though). they get more snow than Portland, but not a ton. 

I live in the 'burbs west of Portland and while it's getting harder to find, there's still pretty decent deals on land outside of the Urban Growth Boundary. Look at areas like Sherwood and Newberg as well. I always tell people to visit the Portland area around November-January to get a feel of what it's like in the winter. It's a big change from L.A. but it's not that bad. The hardest part for me isn't the clouds or rain, it's the short days of winter. It's only lihgjt between 7:30am and 4:30pm at the shortest part. Lots of dark and even at noon the sun is only about 45 degrees above (if you can see it) 

Check out Mobile, Alabama. They're a port-city with fair housing prices. Airbus recently moved operations to Mobile which helped their local economy. Mobile is about an hour from the Alabama beach resorts and Pensacola, FL.

Well, first off, about the rain. In Western Oregon and Washington our number of rainy days are also quite high. However, everybody who doesn't live around here seems to think that this fact means serious rain for every one of those days. It doesn't. While we definitely can have some Biblical downpours, many of the days that technically count as rainy get little more than a trace of precipitation. Don't get me wrong - as I said, west of the Cascades it is a temperate rainforest! But, many of the rainy days are sprinkles or showers, especially in the spring and fall and even commonly in the rainy winters. Spring especially, in Portland I like to call it "popcorn weather" because you might have a torrential downpour at noon and by 1pm it's mostly sunny and beautiful.

As for hiking and outdoor fun, PacNWers are super into it because there is so much right at our doorstep. I'll use Portland as an example because I live here. The city has the largest park inside city limits of any city in the world. So there's hiking less than a mile from downtown. But there is amazing recreation within an hour of the city. We have a few volcanoes hanging out which tend to be completely surrounded by recreation areas for obvious reasons ;), but fire up Google Maps or Google Earth and pull up the Oregon/Washington area. See those huge swaths of green, the state and national forests? Yeah, all of that. The Cascades are named that because of the waterfalls. Search up things like "silver falls" and "ramona falls" and "columbia gorge hikes" and get ready to page through the results.

Waves I'm less familiar with - I do know that a wetsuit is basically mandatory year round due to water temps - but we're on the Pacific Rim and we do have some broad sand beaches in between the forested cliffs, so there must be some, right? There is also plenty of opportunity for river recreation on the Willamette, Columbia and Clackamas rivers, and lots of lakes and reservoirs for fishing and kayaking.

As another poster noted, in Portland specifically the real estate market is white-hot and probably near a peak (we hope?) but you said you wanted a patch of land so you might want to be somewhere else anyway. But in greater Portland, you'd definitely be buying high, so watch out.

Lago Vista off Lake Travis is so beautiful!! Near Austin. Look it up....The Ocean is 3 hours away😊

I absolutely love the Pacific Northwest. It meets all your listed criteria, but for example in Oregon, average number of cloudy days per year (defined as 80-100% cloud cover averaged over the daylight hours of a day) ranges from ~160 to ~240, mostly based on how close to the Pacific you are and whether or not you're west of the Cascades. Seattle and Portland (both west of the Cascades) are similar at around ~220 cloudy days. It is however important to note the classification-defying PacNW climate* in that western rim: our clear, dry, low humidity summers are very unusual considering that we live in a temperate rainforest! There's also an amazingly low number of insects given that fact.

Oregon and Washington absolutely cannot be beat in terms of direct access to a huge amount and variety of nature. You want woods? Like I said, temperate rainforest. Some of the second-growth forests I've camped and hiked in are unbelievably beautiful, let alone the old growth. My favorite site at my favorite campground in the world is next to a tree stump bigger than a minivan.

So, if you hate the clouds - I don't - at least you're getting something in the exchange.

* (the climate really does defy classification due to the dry summers - it does not fit in the Koppen scale.)

Karl,

"

-I like water that has waves—so it’s near a decent-sized lake or an ocean

-Land is relatively cheap—I would like to live on a decent-sized plot of land

"

That's a great wish list! Me too!

Unfortunately, such a place doesn't exist.    I think the best you're going to get is Los Angeles, San Francisco, Portland, Seattle, Vancouver... and I like these cities for the reasons you cite above. but everyone else does too! So prices are high.

If you want water and don't want to pay for it, move to Corpus Christi or the MS coast, but watch out for hurricanes!  If you're okay with rivers and lakes consider chattanooga or any city in Maine (many lakes).

Let me know where you decide to move.

Best,

Jon

you literally described Alaska in your want list! There are plenty of small towns where you can get land for super cheap... and Alaska has more woods and nature than the entire lower 48 combined! Lots of snow in the winter though :)