ERE City (US)

[jacob]

A commune is substantially more ambitious than what I have in mind. I simply figured that an ERE city would make ERE meetups, teaching, tool borrowing, support, etc.---simple things---much easier. Maybe if we ever decide on a city (or several), such communes could be built in the vicinity. The style than best fit into existing regulations would likely be an RV park since it allows people to move in and out very easily.

[Freedom_2018]

How about the "human nature" aspect of such a venture?

Given that people are people, how to prevent issues like "I am more ERE than you" type of keeping up with the Joneses?
Does someone who have a slightly higher level of consumption be looked down upon by his neighbors? What is someone is not as mechanically adept, would he/she feel marginalized in such a community? Would someone who is more outgoing and friendly feel unwelcome (have to wonder about this after my trip to Seattle area)? What would be the dominant social mores? Would the INTJs start getting on the case of the INTPs for being too laid back and lazy and not showing up to the meetings on time? What about religious vs non-religious orientations etc? There are many many variables here....more complex than weather prediction.

I think FI/ERE mindset might be a necessary but not sufficient condition for such a venture to take hold. Or maybe it can be done by some people at a smaller scale...i.e. folks who would have gotten along anyways and FI/ERE is the icing on the cake.

Maybe ERE city is more feasible as a virtual concept...like through this blog/forum?

Sorry...don't mean to be Debbie Downer but have had some life experiences.

[sshawnn]

Wilmington, NC: very nice weather, high quality beaches, cheap rents, University feel (could be good or bad), about 1.5 hours away from Triangle Research Park

I just returned from Wilmington. My sister lives there and I spent a few days visiting with she and her husband. Although they live in Wilmington proper, I spent time in Carolina Beach and Kure Beach. I enjoyed the mild (at least not harsh) winter conditions, the expansive interesting coast line made up of islands and rivers, and the lack of crowds. My sister reports that June-August is NOT a pleasant time to be there with the many tourists but September-May is very nice.

[jennypenny]

I spent time in Carolina Beach and Kure Beach. I enjoyed the mild (at least not harsh) winter conditions, the expansive interesting coast line made up of islands and rivers, and the lack of crowds. My sister reports that June-August is NOT a pleasant time to be there with the many tourists but September-May is very nice.

That wouldn't be a deal breaker for me. It just means you could rent out your place during that time for income and travel someplace else that's nicer in the summer. If you were willing to go to someplace off-season during that time, it wouldn't be cost-prohibitive. Places like Whistler are beautiful in the summer. If you can stand the weather, there are cheap but nice carribean rentals during the summer, or just sail.

[sshawnn]

I spent time in Carolina Beach and Kure Beach. I enjoyed the mild (at least not harsh) winter conditions, the expansive interesting coast line made up of islands and rivers, and the lack of crowds. My sister reports that June-August is NOT a pleasant time to be there with the many tourists but September-May is very nice.

That wouldn't be a deal breaker for me. It just means you could rent out your place during that time for income and travel someplace else that's nicer in the summer. If you were willing to go to someplace off-season during that time, it wouldn't be cost-prohibitive. Places like Whistler are beautiful in the summer. If you can stand the weather, there are cheap but nice carribean rentals during the summer, or just sail.

Right on! I talked with my sister about her buying a "vacation" property and possibly paying for it with the proceeds from rentals, June-August. They are not at a place where not working is an option so they could work a second seasonal job, and camp*, homeshare with friends, etc while prospering from their place.

I thought of the options you mentioned, specifically blue water cruising during those brutal summer months.

The winter weather while I was there was high in the 40s-50s but 70s are not uncommon. There is PLENTY of available outdoor offseason activity there!

* http://www.nccoastalreserve.net/Resourc ... d/205.aspx

[jacob]

http://www.trulia.com/property/31598132 ... t-SD-57551

Buy the city

[Explorer]

Probably not the right thread since it's meant for an US ERE city, however -->

http://www.ecosia.org/search?q=sicilian ... don=chrome

An interesting ERE opportunity (if it wasn't for the geographical location, immigrants, climate (?) etc.)
On the bright side though, it would be easy to get enough people to occupy the city

[SimpleLife]

I would posit many small, west coast places as fairly good for ERE. Specifically within an hour or 2 from a city. The prices are MUCH lower at that point. You could go into the main city sometimes also.

I've been looking [obsessively] at Washington (state) lately, particularly in the Puget Sound area. There are many [declining] lumber/fishing towns (Aberdeen, Centralia, Bremerton), where dilapidated houses can be had for $20,000 paying $400/year in RE taxes. A decent house (nonfixer) can be had for $50,000/$600 and a large one for $75,000/$800. In short, housing can be ridiculously cheap. The crime stats are kinda iffy but not as bad as Chicago.

If you don't mind the tsunami bottleneck risk, then Ocean Shores was/is a developed retirement community where 4 season vacation homes can be had for around $110,000/$1200 or so.

Artsy/touristy places like Port Townsend and Anacortes start around $150,000/$1600 or so (lowest I've seen was around $60k but that didn't look too good). That's what I'm looking at, namely for the added entertainment value. I've also looked at Union, WA. Bill Gates has a house there. That's about as far away as you can get from anything in Puget Sound.

There are also rural opportunities. You can get 10a for $175,000 with a small house in the middle of nowhere.

TL;DR - Washington state is currently my favorite state due to: decent RE prices, low RE taxes, no income tax, no excessive winter heating costs, long growth season, fresh water from the sky, lots of nature.

Curious what made you pick Chicago over Aberdeen. I have been looking at houses (on Zillow) recently and find that the houses in the 60-70K range are decent, low taxes, etc. The tsunami risk is what I also found. Also open to other cities with reasonable commutes to Seattle/Redmond.

[jacob]

http://earlyretirementextreme.com/updat ... house.html

Equally importantly, it wasn't a choice made in a vacuum. In 2014 there were reasons for us to stay here. Not so many reasons to restart something in Aberdeen.

[Slevin]

Probably not the right thread since it's meant for an US ERE city, however -->

http://www.ecosia.org/search?q=sicilian ... don=chrome

An interesting ERE opportunity (if it wasn't for the geographical location, immigrants, climate (?) etc.)
On the bright side though, it would be easy to get enough people to occupy the city

I actually like the idea sitting behind here (and in Jacob's earlier post). Why not use the already set up infrastructure of a mostly empty town with plummeting/ nonexistent housing prices? The houses will definitely need repairs to be done on them, but this invites a beautiful amount of community involvement and sharing in terms of having community tool libraries, sharing labor, and could theoretically grow the community into a tight-knit group. The repairs that need done could also be done in a high-quality and sustainable fashion. And in parallel with the construction efforts could be efforts with restoring the land around them. Community gardens, food forests, etc. could become mature(ish) right when the houses finish being repaired.

Ideally I would also vote for this to be more of a "city" rather than a "commune" where maybe a sizeable chunk of the population is FI/RE instead of a community built solely on the ideas that we have. It would also be nice if there was a small tourist population, as then they could see the way we are living and how much we have repaired the ecosystem and created a very comfortable livelihood for ourselves, and then maybe they would want to join too .


Other considerations:
It seems like this theory/idea would leverage a large amount of initial resource dump followed by long term payoff in terms of return on housing and food supply. It also needs some sort of long term "desirability" for others to keep the resale values of property up (hopefully real cost of ownership <$0 due to all the improvements we have made on both the individual properties and landscape as well as the ecosystem of the towns).

As others have mentioned it needs to be somewhat close to a more major city to facilitate other types of interaction that would need to occur on a smaller scale (obtaining necessary outside resources).

Side Note:
In the end I think this may be too much of a pipe dream. In trying to bound a large group (50 or so at least) to some sort of collective checklist, we would have to impose and compromise far on wants more than many individuals would be comfortable with. Thus there is really no incentive on the individual level to move to this ERE city (unless it is a large improvement over their current situation).

[Papers of Indenture]

Maybe of some interest here

http://www.openworldvillages.org/

[JL13]

Time to revive this idea in light of Flint, MI water crisis? Zillow indicates we could buy an entire subdivision for $100,000. Build some rainwater catchment systems and we're golden!

[zarathustra]

Not opposed to this idea.

[C40]

But, it's Michigan.... Maybe I'd stop by for some summers

[JL13]

For the price, we can all just spend summers there!

[jacob]

http://reason.com/blog/2016/02/02/free- ... s-its-time

The Free State Project has reached its goal of 20000 people. The idea, which started in 2004, was to pledge to move to NH if enough pledges were collected. I guess we'll see what happens now.

Maybe something similar is required to actually get to the point of "ERE City" albeit probably with a much lower number.

[vexed87]

If I were not tied by loved ones and pesky immigration laws, I'd be there in a heart beat! Perhaps the libertarian minded folk won't mind harbouring like-minded illegal aliens?

[JL13]

@Vexed. It's not a problem. We can set it up so everyone in the ERE city will be married to each other. So you'll can get a green card!

Wait, in which states is polygamy allowed?

[enigmaT120]

@Vexed. It's not a problem. We can set it up so everyone in the ERE city will be married to each other. So you'll can get a green card!

Wait, in which states is polygamy allowed?

Ha. None, yet. But according to the folks who oppose gay marriage, it's inevitable now.

[leeholsen]

I looked for somewhere else to put this but did not see a place; so I put it here as I have been designating Manchester, NH as my ERE city and it was initially one of the primary ERE cities.

I was looking at commutting to Boston from Manchester just in case my finances in ERE took a header and I needed to get a job again and Boston would have the better job market and it is 55 miles one way; so I was going to look into boston housing until I checked the state tax rates and NH is zero while MA is 6.25%.

So I did the math and it would actually be cheaper to live in NH and commute(if you do not include the commutting time as a cost) than live in Boston with any income over around 25K as if you have a 50MPG prius and commuted 48 weeks a year on $3 per gallon; your year costs would be about $1500 which is what you would pay in takes at 6.25%. and it would be also cheaper to live in NH at 40k and cummte if gas was $5; something it has never reached in the usa.

I just found it interesting.