Finding a "happy" town

[Lucky C]

All else being equal, I would prefer to live in a town with these qualities:
A. Lower housing prices relative to other nearby areas (so not a lot of high-income households)
B. But the majority of families are still doing fine financially (low poverty level, low crime rate)
C. A happy community - friendly townsfolk, quality local businesses, social events, kids that actually play outside

(A) is simple to determine with any real estate search, but as far as I know (B) requires some town-by-town research and there may not be very good data for all towns. Finally for (C), if you haven't lived in a town and don't know anyone who does, there is only so much info you can gather from reading about small towns online or visiting them for a short period of time. This can make it difficult to distinguish homes trading at low price-to-happiness ratios from value trap homes in miserable neighborhoods.

Anyone have tips or resources for researching small towns before dedicating a lot of time to visit them, look at houses, etc.?
Any stories of towns that seemed pleasant at first but turned out to be a lot worse after moving there?

[The Old Man]

http://www.city-data.com
City-data is perhaps one of the best resources for researching places to live. Principally geared to the USA, but has a global orientation.

[poleo]

Does it have to be in the US?

[jennypenny]

Have you read Melody Warnick's This Is Where You Belong: The Art and Science of Loving the Place You Live? Some of the ideas she recommends for loving the place you live would also be useful in analyzing where to live.

[Toska2]

Ask old people in the town if they moved there. Without being tied to a job they made the search already.

[OTCW]

Mayberry

[Lucky C]

@poleo For my own needs it would have to be in the US, but I am interested in what others have to say about finding "hidden gem" type towns with lots of happy folks.

@jennypenny I know I heard of this book somewhere before - thanks for reminding me about it!

[Riggerjack]

Part of your list is contradicting others. The low comparative cost. Contradicts good incomes.

This isn't really a problem. It just means you need a town in transition. Someplace that used to be X, but X died. Now they are successfully changing to Y, but not far enough to Jack up housing, yet.

Start with the area you WANT to live in. Rural Pennsylvania, or whatever. Now look at the towns that are growing fast. In Washington, we have urban planning, showing growth, anticipated growth, etc. Also, census data. Towns around here that would make your list in the past: silverdale in the 80's, and Sequim, in the 90's. Silverdale went from 1 stop sign town to a large small town over the last 30+ years by building a mall in the middle of nowhere, and adopting some business friendly zoning. All of a sudden it became the shopping center for 3 counties.
Sequim went from small old logging town to retirement meca, by advertising heavily, particularly in California, and pushing retirement friendly zoning. Lots of new developments, lots of retail, lots of medical clinics.

I was pretty clueless and doubtful on both counts, I saw this start when I was a teenager. It totally worked. I didn't live in either place, but I was nearby. I wouldn't say either has reasonable housing prices anymore.

Another possibility would be small college towns. But then the endlessly renewing congregation of a huge number of clueless and self absorbed newly minted adults would have its own drawbacks...

[GandK]

Try looking in this thread: Resources for those who are trying to find the right retirement location

[poleo]

Lucky C, Well I can share my experience for what it's worth. My significant other and I have been looking for a place to settle down in the countryside, in order to pursue our passion for farming, food and nature. We are both Norwegian and come from Oslo, the capital city of about 800 000 inhabitants. We found ourselves gradually moving out of Oslo - first we lived in a tiny, stereotypical apartment, paying the granted, astronomical rent. Then we moved to the suburbs, into a hippie collective, which wasn't quite us, so we moved two hours outside the city and rented a smallholding. After this we decided to buy a smallholding, two hours outside Oslo too, but in a different direction. So far our story was defined by a sense of always discovering new aspects of our needs, our wants and indeed ourselves, in regard to the stated passions. The learning curve was steep, and none of the places we lived were especially good - the latter particularly standing out as a catastrophe, and worsened by the fact that we owned the place.

At that point, when we realized we'd have to abandon our fairly freshly started venture, we began to realize that we now had a pretty clear idea of what we wanted. The sea, a nice community and good opportunities for a lifestyle that naturally incorporated many ERE principles. None of these were present where we were - it was a nasty community in the middle of a forest and very close to a huge shopping/entertainment centre. Not great.

Now, I'm happy to brag, we live in a calm, lovely town in Northern Norway, where we can see the sea from most of our windows, the people are super friendly and everything is good.

What can be drawn from this? I don't know. We just kept moving until we got there. A practical piece of advice - never buy a place somewhere, unless you either know someone there that you TRUST, or you have rented for a period and gotten to know it. This was a big mistake on our part, but positively it has led us to appreciate following success greatly, and in general made us one experience wiser - so nowadays I don't know if I'd be without it.

Keep looking, these places exist.