Quiet, easy commute, no neighbor issues: is it possible?

[SimpleLife]

I am on my third house currently, and am finding that although the expensive community is generally OK, the HOA is useless and unwilling to enforce any of the rules.

I've pretty much realized that living in the city or the burbs is no longer for me. My commute is long as it is now, an hour each way, but that's because I am not fighting traffic. Most people in the area live with a 2-4 hour round trip commute per day, even if you live in 700K homes, the traffic is so bad in the area in general, it still takes forever to get to where the high paying jobs are.

Although I am planning on working for another 6.5 years now even though already FI, I am considering moving to the country. While I wanted to be close to the city for jobs, there are always telecommute jobs in IT. May not be the best jobs but an option, and working from home beats going into the office.

ANYWAYS...is anyone else on this page? The thought of either putting money down on a small house on acreage (since I can work from home now at my present job and do on most days) OR...cashing out all of my real estate to get away from land lording and into index funds in an increasingly government regulated world sounds pretty good right now.

If I had to give up something, I think it makes sense that, even if I decide to keep working for a little while, for the majority of the rest of my life I will have peace and quiet. I'd rather have a longer commute when I do have to commute than to deal with the noise pollution and obnoxious inconsiderate douche bags.

[enigmaT120]

I love living out in the sticks. I can't telecommute my job so I'm stuck with an hour+ each way, though for the past several years I've used my employer-provided transit pass to make a bicycle/bus commute work a couple of days per week. It's two or three hours each way though, but gives me 1 1/2 hours minimum of biking. I think my commute sucks and I'll be glad to be done with it in 4 years 3 months.

[SimpleLife]

I love living out in the sticks. I can't telecommute my job so I'm stuck with an hour+ each way, though for the past several years I've used my employer-provided transit pass to make a bicycle/bus commute work a couple of days per week. It's two or three hours each way though, but gives me 1 1/2 hours minimum of biking. I think my commute sucks and I'll be glad to be done with it in 4 years 3 months.

Sounds awesome. I mean, it makes sense to deal with the commute if the place you live is a place you love and enjoy.

I suppose one could also tough out the city life and then retire to the sticks, but man, I don't know how much longer I can stomach the daily grind of city living, city working, and general bs.

Looking forward to gardening again, having chickens, rabbits, etc. Miss that...

Is one better off buying large acreage or a large lot that isn't over an acre in the middle of nowhere. There are tons of places on craigslist, little cabins in Eastern Washington, some even on 20 acres for 65K...

[George the original one]

You need water rights if you're looking at Eastern Washington... and try to pick a site with acceptable internet unless you really don't mind satellite (note that you can't use VPN from a satellite connection to connect to work).

5-10 acres if you want to cut your own firewood and/or have large livestock (cow, sheep, horse). Property should have a house already so you don't have to run through the zoning code. 0.5 acres if you only want a large garden and small livestock (rabbits/chickens). 1 acre for garden with a few goats, but you'll have to bring in supplements.

It can be tough finding the right rural property because the property may be fine, but the home will be a piece of crap. Or the home will be fine, but the location is crap. Or the land and the home are so-so and you can make do. Or you find a good property/home, but the owner has an inflated sense of its value (e.g. our Oregon coastal home was originally listed for $300k during 2010 while the owner was alive, but we got it for about $180k from the estate in 2012 since it needed windows/siding/roof/interior work).

[jacob]

(Fast, cheap, good) implies that [a cheap commute] will either be really expensive or take a really long time. The near universal human hate of commuting explains real estate price as a function of distance to the nearest city center to a remarkably high degree.

There tends to be a steep drop off in pricing about 90 minutes out (that's 3 hours per day!). Few can do that. If you can, you'll get it cheap. Maybe it can be done on the train and you can write the next American novel commuting. I know a guy who wrote a book commuting on rail between Chicago and Evanston.

[cmonkey]

I am with you on the rural living and if you can make it happen go for it. Set up some search criteria on Zillow. They will email you when a new place that fits your numbers comes on the market and when any price changes happen on those same homes.

Noise pollution is the worst and we deal with it pretty bad where we are at several miles outside of town. Once we are FI there is a good chance we are getting out of dodge within a few years.

[SimpleLife]

Yeah, I need to either move soon or at least take a sanity break vacation (I haven't had a real vacation in probably 7-10 years, maybe a 5 day weekend using PTO since here in the US we love to only get 2 weeks vacation which is easy to burn through when you have to take care of most errands with government offices, home repair, etc.).

The INTJ in me has a hard time relaxing even on vacation though because I know the problem awaits me when I come back, and I will have to face it most of the time. I'm more the type that wants to solve the root of the problem.

In any case, I've been googling the issue for a few days and it appears there are neighbor issues most everywhere. For example, the loud mariachi music one poster talked about during the summer into the morning.

Having grown up in the country, we certainly had neighbor issues, but mostly conflicts over easement/road usage, cows coming onto our property, etc. No noise issues. Heck, one of my colleagues is having issues with her ONE and only neighbor who owns the acreage next to her. 5 Acres and still the neighbor ends up being a douche. Most people in the country really just want to be left alone and are escaping the noise pollution and douche neighbors. In the above case, the neighbor just wants her to build her house on the far side of her lot.

Anyways, George, that's a good point a lot of people forget. I research the utilities and internet when I look at a potential prospect outside the city.

[chenda]

You might find its easier and cheaper to buy a house at the edge of a small town. I would imagine the price will be higher but if you're in walking distance of amenties and have utilities nearby you'll save money. You don't actually need much space to have decent privacy. Plus you'll have probably some law enforcement and medical care nearby should you need it, and perhaps less issues with neighbours if people are used to having a few people nearby.

[Jean]

I bought a house for 115k and my commute was 1hour of bike mostly trough fields and forest, and what looks at most like HOA regulation is a local rule that say that my trees are not allowed to block the streets.
So that's possible.
Without the telecommuniting possibility, I'de look for an area where jobs aren't concentrated in cities, or for a job in a city under 100'000 inhabitants.

[connie]

it's hardly to find such that places nowaday :/