I lived in New Jersey (between Cherry Hill and Pennsauken) and decided to move to North Carolina (to a town called Cary, just south-west of Raleigh).
The cost of living is fairly cheap compared to the Northeast. My property taxes in NC are $1600 a year. My landlord paid almost $6000 a year for the place I was renting in NJ, and I know people in NJ that pay as much as $24,000 a year in property taxes, though $8000 to $14000 is more typical for NJ.
I considered Florida, but it's way too hot for me. North Carolina is a nice compromise. Not too hot, not too cold. In fact, there's a term for people that move south to Florida from the Northeast and then move to North Carolina. They call them half-backs. As in... they move to Florida, then move halfway back.
I ended up getting a house in NC on .45 acres with an in-ground pool for $215,000. It's an older home, built in 1971 and the pool was installed in 1980. I chose an older home because I wanted to be in an established neighborhood with larger lots and fully grown trees. Here's a video I made while driving home to test the image stabilization feature on YouTube. This is right around 5:30 pm, so it's peak rush hour, and the day was really overcast and threatening to rain so it's pretty dark. You can see the residential area starting around 6:40 in the video. Check out all the trees...
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Re: Conversation with Mrs Otto about leak in our inflatable kiddie pool 2 weeks ago.
