When you moved, name the 2 top considerations (jobs, rental, quality of life)

[Nanny Goat]

Or factors that made you move, other than job! That's an easier decision, need a job, get an offer and go, but if your job/income was not a consideration or your job could be anywhere, what 2 factors made it a deal for you?
Just curious. I know for myself what my priorities/important factors are in the decision process, but what are yours?

[MrRational]

Originally Posted by Upstate Nancy

Or factors that made you move, other than job!

Outside the retiree forum you can't expect many to be able to even consider this question
as posed. Especially when asked in the past tense.

But as I am one of those unicorns you're hunting...
I chose to buy in Winston as it's the closest thing to a real city with a reasonable arts
and culture presence in reasonable proximity (>50mi) to the Blue Ridge Parkway and
the Appalachians for all the things I like to do up there... and RE prices are a relative bargain.

I chose the fixer upper house (almost an acre, detached garage, BIG fenced dog yard)
to give me something to do until something else changes.

[NCN]

Top three considerations are location, location, location.

[Oreo's Mom]

Many factors went into our decision to move to the Dallas metroplex, but our top two were to be closer to family and to be close to a university that offers A PhD program in my career field when I go back to school next year. Austin was my first choice but unfortunately we had no family nearby, but so far I have not regretted our move.

[Ted Bear]

Starting at the big end of the funnel, it came down to states with no income tax, then states with little or no snow (coming from Syracuse area of upstate NY), then environment (mountains, water), then a University town, and a large medical community (both for diversity), then not too hot, then proximity to transpiration, and ability to get back to 'elderly' family in not too much time.

Moved to a place where we didn't know a soul, and are VERY happy. Doing a lot of homework; visiting the area often during each of the seasons; and asking a LOT of questions to people in all walks of life helped us to confidently make a good decision.

It's been over a year now. Settled in. Lots of friends. No regrets.

(And I didn't have to even start the snow blower, which we stupidly brought with us, this past winter.)

[DaniellaG]

Well for me it is cost of living and weather. Also in the future it may be family near.

[House4kids]

Idea of where we wanted to retire - that's about it other than job

[TXred]

I haven't made the move yet but one reason I kept looking at Dallas over and over is the ability to buy my home and not pay a fortune in a few years. I knew I wanted a big city with many job opportunities and considered LA, San Francisco and Seattle. While they might have been ok for a while, even with high rental prices, I knew after a couple of years I wanted to buy a decent house for about $150k and couldn't do it in those places.

So besides the job I would say home prices, as well as the variety of things to do in the city itself. I live in a small, somewhat boring city as far as culture right now and am looking forward to the museums, exhibits, sports teams, and attractions in DFW.

[wideworld]

Quality of life and close proximity of nature to a metropolitan.

In hindsight, I could have easily been much pickier (job opportunities/growth, taxes, real estate, health care, average life expectancy, cost of living) and still ticked all my boxes. Made a good choice.

[Marie24]

I'm looking at a move from the Chicago area to the Atlanta area next year. Most important for me are a lower cost of living, total availability of jobs for my industry (aka if you end up unemployed, how easy would it be to find another job?), a more conservative state, and somewhere I had friends.