We used to live in upstate NY. (Capital District) Home prices are depressed up there bc of their very high property taxes. We moved out of the state in 2015. We could only get 350k cash for our 4 BR 3800 sqft center hall colonial with a finished basement, solar panels on roof and a whole house generator on a half acre lot. The house was worth more iIMHO but so many people were moving out there was no one really looking to buy. Took us two years to sell. But we were paying 10k in taxes a year. We built a 4500 sqft home in NC and we currently only pay 3k in taxes. The same home in NY would probably have been almost 30k in taxes a year! Granted my home here in a rural area will not sell for what I paid for it, but overall our cost of living for gas, electricity (water and sewage are a different story) and other things are much cheaper than upstate NY. I now live in a red county in the Bible Belt and am loving it.