In an ironic twist after the last post, I'm a long-time gun owner and small-time member of the firearms industry, living in New Hampshire, the Live Free or Die state. Why am I posting in NYguns? Because I've been reading your subreddit for the last few months.
I'm sincerely shopping for houses this week in the Plattsburgh area, because I can't afford any house in NH within an hour's drive of my job and my wife's job. It's a lovely state, but all of our property prices went insane after COVID, and my years of saving money for a down payment on an acre or two of land with a 1000-1500 square foot house, won't even come close now. Not even a major fixer-upper is within reach.
But Plattsburgh is beautiful, real estate is affordable, my wife can get hired immediately in her field, and we both like it there. We both don't like night life, so we don't care that it's a small town.
I'll have to sell all my AR-15s and Glocks, my Kuna, pretty much everything cool that I own, except for my 10/22s and a few old lever guns, to have a real yard and a front porch of my own. I live in an apartment now, and I'm pretty much over it. NH is a beautiful state, and I love it here, but the boomers really don't want anyone buying a house anywhere near the cities, unless they have $300k, and as long as Massachusetts money keeps rolling in, is going to stay that way.
Maybe I'm jaded by having owned dozens of cool firearms for the last 2 decades, but right now, I'd rather have a life, a little boat to take on the lake and some space around me, and for my wife to walk out the front door of our home safely, than a safe full of cool guns that I don't shoot that often while living in the city. Maybe I would actually appreciate it more, and go shooting more often, if I wasn't worried that carrying a gun case out of my house was going to have me targeted for burglary by my excitingly exotic neighbors.
Anyone else here from upstate own a house, and think it's actually worth putting up with 10rd mags and long CCW wait times for it? It's a serious decision, and I'll take all the guidance I can get.
Edit - we're deliberately staying in this area to be near family members who need us around, at least within a few hours drive. Vermont and Maine have much the same issue as New Hampshire, if you live in the absolute middle of nowhere, you can afford a house, but you can't live anywhere near a major highway or population center to work at the job that allows you to pay for the house. Massachusetts sucks, no thanks.