Who's coming, Who's going?

[iris lilies]

I checked the map going back to 2013 as there wasn't data for 2012, and I noticed that IL had around 60% to 65% outbound and 30%ish inbound all those years. I'm not surprised. We have been mulling over leaving IL for a while now even though all of our family members live here.

We live in St. Louis. I spent 4 years looking around for property for our retirement and there sre several comunities in IL we like a lot. But Dh stated flatly that he would not move to IL. I think he might have made an exception for Highland, a cute little prosperus farming town with lots of Swiss influences. But basically all of the interesting places in IL were off limits.

Back whenI was growing up in Iowa it was considered a step up in the world to move to IL but no longer.

[pony mom]

I'm in NJ. It's very crowded in many areas and I don't know which areas people are moving out of. I'm in a rural area in the NW part, a few minutes from PA. Many people I work with commute from PA because they can't afford to live in NJ.

When driving around my own county and two others, I see a lot of empty homes, small and oversized. I guess they can't afford them and the bank takes over. But are they staying in NJ or moving out of state?

[Yppej]

I drove through Jersey City last week. It was not appealing though the gas was cheap.

[catherine]

I drove through Jersey City last week. It was not appealing though the gas was cheap.

Jersey City is the new Hoboken, which is the new Williamsburg. In other words, old and icky a decade ago--now gentrified and hip. Great place to live if you work in Manhattan. My son lived in that general area (Union City) and it had its advantages (especially his skyline view) but I couldn't stand the traffic and the parking.

[jp1]

Like any city there are nice parts and less nice parts to Jersey City. When we lived there we didn't live in the trendy brownstone neighborhoods downtown because they were expensive. There wasn't anything exciting about our neighborhood and I wouldn't say that it was especially attractive, but it was safe, cheap ($1,700 for a brand new 3 bed/2bath apartment in a two family house 10 years ago) and we actually knew and interacted with several of our neighbors on a regular basis. Traffic and parking weren't an issue for us because we didn't have a car. There was a private bus company that ran buses literally every minute or two all day long that stopped at our corner.