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I currently live in southern MD and I'm considering moving to the Raleigh area. I'm considering the move because it's becoming very expensive to live in MD and all the cranky northerners moving down are making the rat race worse. I like the hospitality in Southern MD and it still feels southern to me. What's a town/suburb around Raleigh that's comparable? Are there a ton of transplants from up north like everyone says? Anyone from the southern MD area? Any info would be greatly appreciated! Thanks!
I currently live in southern MD and I'm considering moving to the Raleigh area. I'm considering the move because it's becoming very expensive to live in MD and all the cranky northerners moving down are making the rat race worse. I like the hospitality in Southern MD and it still feels southern to me. What's a town/suburb around Raleigh that's comparable? Are there a ton of transplants from up north like everyone says? Anyone from the southern MD area? Any info would be greatly appreciated! Thanks!
Sorry to inform you but, yes, there are TONS of us cranky northerners here. Haven't you heard that Cary (large suburb of Raleigh) stands for
Containment Area for Relocated Yankees? And we haven't limited ourselves to Cary. We're everywhere!
Location: Chapel Hill, NC, formerly NoVA and Phila
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I hate to break it to you, but if you are coming from Southern Maryland, you are a "Northerner" too. And if you move here, please make sure you don't mention to your new neighbors from New Jersey and New York that you think they are cranky, you won't make too many friends. Welcome to North Carolina!
That's one of my favorite things about MD, to someone from New England you're a southerner and to someone from NC you're a Yankee. It's like we're our own breed! Anyway, I grew up half time in MoCo and the other half in Chuck County. Left for college, went back to DC and lived all over the metro area for about 10 years. Alexandria, Gaithersburg, Rockville, Bethesda, Arlington, you name it!
Are there more northerners here than in MD, I don't think so since I always felt like the entire state of Pennsylvania migrated to MD that and just DC is so much larger overall. The Pennsylvanians didn't really seem to go into NoVA though at nearly the same rate for whatever reason. Not to mention all the transplants who came from everywhere for DC's job market. It's hard to find anyone who even grew up in the DC area! Anyway, if you compare metro areas, Raleigh is MUCH, MUCH, MUCH smaller. But if you grew up and never really spent a whole lot of time outside of Charles, St. Mary's and Calvert counties then it is certainly more comparable. Raleigh is one big suburb.
If you live in Southern MD because you like the fact that it is slightly more rural (depending on where in SoMD you are) then you'd probably like the areas south of Raleigh and outside 540 in Northern North Raleigh if that's a term. Lots more open space, larger lots, kind of a country feel, but a whole lot closer to downtown Raleigh than anything in SoMD is to DC. If you live in SoMD simply because you think the housing prices in MoCo and more urban counties are insane you'll be very happy to see the prices in the more urban areas of Raleigh, like North Raleigh and downtown Raleigh. And when I say urban, I don't mean Rockville or Bethesda urban, you won't find anything like that here in my opinion. I mean more like Gaithersburg urban. This area has a lot of neighborhoods and strip malls. Although I will say, I think Raleigh did an infinitely better job of integrating commercial real estate with residential than virtually everywhere in DC, MD or VA.
Like everyone else, I would recommend coming down here for a weekend to check things out. It doesn't take but a couple days to drive around Raleigh and Cary. Maybe one more day if you were interested in Chapel Hill and Durham.
That's one of my favorite things about MD, to someone from New England you're a southerner and to someone from NC you're a Yankee.
Eh, I dunno--we've always counted the border states as hybrids, and Southern Maryland is rural and closer to Southern culture and even, perhaps, accent (a BIG part of whether someone is deemed a "Yankee" or not).
But yeah, moving to the Triangle area to get away from Northern transplants--have you lost your mind? It's like there is a space portal running from Long Island/New Jersey directly to Raleigh (one-way).
I'm considering the move because it's becoming very expensive to live in MD and all the cranky northerners moving down are making the rat race worse. I like the hospitality in Southern MD and it still feels southern to me.
So southern hospitality does not apply to "cranky northerners", er?
We lived in Baltimore metro area but I've never actually noticed a significant presence of "cranky northerners"... We moved here solely because of the real estate / cost of living / crime situation in MD. Very happy with our decision. But if you're running away from "northerners" then keep looking, as correctly suggested.
There are at least several threads here specifically regarding relocation from MD - look it up. Also many very long and informative threads by the folks considering relocation or moving away.
Thanks for the help lilhippie1. I wasn't stating that all transplants from up north are cranky, it just seems that this area is drawing a certain personality to it because of DC. It's becoming very elitist in many ways. I'm sure Raleigh has people from all over that are trying to escape the rat race.
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