In my last post, as part of my quest to find areas to in which to purchase land for a homestead, I whittled down the top 42 metro areas to a shortlist of 9, based on the following factors: minimum elevation of 75m (236 ft), low temperatures in winter at or above freezing (32F), reasonable number of rain days and rainfall, lower violent crime rates, low overall tax rates, low natural disaster risks, and reasonable home and land prices.
The nine metro areas are, in order of population, San Antonio, Dallas, Austin, Fort Worth, Charlotte, Nashville, El Paso, Atlanta and Raleigh. These are all great metro areas, but in the spirit of finding three winners, I am going to have to eliminate six of them.
El Paso, TX
While El Paso has the lowest home prices by far, low crime rate, no state income tax, it does have higher risk of drought and wildfires as annual rainfall is just 235 mm or about 9 in. That’s less than 1/3 of the next cities on the list (San Antonio and Austin) with 810 mm or about 32 in.
I’m going to eliminate El Paso.
Atlanta, GA and Nashville, TN
I’m finding it hard to exclude Nashville because I love the city, the lush green country, its culture and its people. It has all the factors I like, but it has the third highest home prices, and its violent crime rate is over 1,233 per 100k residents. The occasional tornado also touches down – this is a personal preference. I can deal with earthquakes and floods, but wildfires and tornadoes and frequent category 5 hurricanes I draw the line at.
Atlanta, which has a violent crime rate of 1,196, and Nashville I therefore eliminate from the final three.
Austin, TX
I’m going to eliminate Austin because its average home price is more than double that of the lowest on the list (El Paso). It’s been a key place to migrate for many years and home and land prices reflect that.
We are left with Charlotte, Raleigh, San Antonio, Fort Worth and Dallas.
Fort Worth and Dallas
I should’ve combined these two earlier on as they’re part of the namesake DFW metro area.
I’m struggling to find anything wrong with them, except for the 1.8%+ annual property tax, but since Texas doesn’t apply an income tax, that’s partially offset. Fort Worth and Dallas both suffer from the occasional tornado, so I’m going to remove them from final contention. It really is nitpicking at this point.
The Winners
Charlotte and Raleigh, NC and San Antonio, TX.
These three amazing metro areas are affordable, have relatively low violent crime rates, reasonable combined property and state income tax rates, have decent rainfall and moderate temperatures.
I’ll be looking around these three metro areas for land to purchase for a homestead. A deeper dive on that to come!
Leave a Reply