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Does upstate NY really have a reputation of being run-down, depressed, backwoods, etc.?
I just moved to NY a few months ago. I didn't have any negative preconceptions of upstate, it was more of a mystery. Then after visiting a few times we completely fell in love with this state and knew it was where we wanted to live.
I don't think it does, and I don't think too many people feel this way either, anymore.
You'll find a select few that will put down an area to justify that they made the right decision to move to a $4000 studio apartment in the city. You'll find the occasional moron from Long Island that has never ventured further than Queens, who is convinced that Upstate is cow tipping and rednecks, based on a story his father told him about cow tipping and rednecks back in the 1950's.
You definitely will hear more people complain about the weather Upstate vs NYC, and for legit reasons. Upstate areas especially in central and western NY will get 4x the snow they get in the city. 25" vs 100". That number sounds huge. But what people forget is how the snow is managed. There's way more room to manage snow even in Upstate cities. In NYC, there's nowhere to put 6" of snow! In Rochester you just chuck it on the front lawn. Plus people saving parking spots they dug out with lawn chairs; not a year goes by that I don't witness one or many physical altercations between people fighting over a dug-out spot. Its pretty common.
But when I tell people I'm going camping Upstate, or going up to a cabin in the mountains that I rented on Airbnb, or even just going for a autumn drive through the Catskills, most people get that jealous look in their eyes. People around me love NY State- the city, not so much. And I live closer to the Poconos, but you won't get that same reaction.
Both of those towns/school districts are probably the most underrated in Upstate NY, because people not familiar with them may not expect them to have high end properties due to the areas they are in. Both school districts are highly regarded as well.
As someone who is currently shopping for a second home in UNY around this price range, I would like to point out that a $1m price tag on a home doesn't make it affluent. Among the listings in this thread is a home listed at nearly $600/sq. ft. It is a home with 8 foot ceilings, old fashioned wood trim everywhere, cheap-looking siding, and a design sensibility that I can only describe as "brown on brown." it is a 1972 home, with potentially all the attendant problems of a 50-year-old home. It is listed at $2m!! I would never live there. You couldn't pay me to live there. And this type of home is so commonplace in upstate NY that it frustrates me to look. Even the ones that have been updated have been updated to what is still a very old-fashioned look, for the most part, or worse yet, the dreaded greige make over. I have found only a few homes that I would live in (considering not only the home itself, but location, nearby amenities, etc). So it puts me in the position of waiting for one of them to go on the market, which may never happen. Again, no matter the price, if the home is functionally obsolete from a design perspective, it is not affluent.
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