Ask HN: What are the best US cities for for working remotely?

[hueving]

What are the best cities with affordable housing that are big enough to have a good variety of food and no (or a very mild) winter that have enough of a tech community for some meetups, etc?

I'm looking for places cheaper than Austin when it comes to cost of living.

[tedmiston]

I don't usually like posts that just link to an external resource, but Nomad List is a (free) search engine built for this exact use case. They have both domestic and international cities.

https://nomadlist.com/

The same guy that created that also recently made a second project of crowdsourced neighborhood characteristics within each city. For example, if you want to find where the tech or hipster neighborhood in a given city is.

https://hoodmaps.com/

For example, SF:

https://hoodmaps.com/san-francisco

[pieterhg → tedmiston]

"What are the best cities with affordable housing that are big enough to have a good variety of food and no (or a very mild) winter that have enough of a tech community for some meetups, etc?"

https://nomadlist.com/cheap-mild-cities-to-visit-in-january-...

The answer would be Tucson, AZ and San Antonio, TX.

If budget isn't important you have more options:

https://nomadlist.com/mild-cities-to-visit-in-january-and-de...

- Gainesville, FL

- Tampa, FL

- Los Angeles, CA

- San Diego, CA

- Jacksonville, FL

- Austin, TX

- Santa Monica, CA

- Phoenix, AZ

- Houston, TX

- Orlando, FL

If you're okay with outside United States, you have countless more options:

https://nomadlist.com/mild-cities-to-visit-in-january-and-de...

From Portugal to Taiwan, Israel to Ecuador, Colombia to Thailand.

P.S. this is based on "mild" temperatures as you said. If you're fine with warm/hot climates, there's even more options.

P.S.2. the cost of living data on Nomad List is now 90%+ accurate.

[bradknowles → pieterhg]

Is San Antonio really that much cheaper than Austin? I'd be really surprised if that were true, but I'd love to see the evidence.

[pieterhg → bradknowles]

Yep, Austin has become a lot more expensive with the influx of people from the rest of America.

Data is crowdsourced but cross checked with public cost of living data for accuracy.

[hueving → tedmiston]

Do they have a way of ranking by places to live permanently?

This site doesn't seem to take into account things like buying a house and property taxes.

[pieterhg → hueving]

Yes. I'm the maker of Nomad List.

You can rank/sort by more long-term attributes like quality of life, rent price etc. Property taxes are too granular data to collect for me and impossible to keep up-to-date for 1,000+ cities though.

See https://nomadlist.com/#sort=life_score for a more long-term quality of life ranking of cities.

[tedmiston → hueving]

I think it's mostly focused on short-term living (digital nomads). It may be worth contacting the creator on Twitter. I'm sure it's not the first time he's had that type of request.

[cylinder]

Somewhere beautiful an hour or so outside of LA or north of SF. Drive into town when there's meetups. Don't waste this opportunity to live in a really nice place that most people cannot viably live in due to lack of employment opportunities.

[hueving → cylinder]

Good point, the only thing I'm concerned about is not having a good variety of restaurants if I'm that far out.

[zerr]

A question for those who live in a year-around summer/spring - isn't it too monotonous? I mean when you don't have a "real" four seasons...

[FlopV → zerr]

I live in the USVI, and we don't have any seasons other than hurricane season...

The reason I live here is because it has my favorite season year round, allowing me to do the hobbies I love year round. spearfishing, hiking, boating, etc. We get a lot of sun, which makes my mood much better than a dark or rainy place.

Having lived in New England, the winter was always kind of something you had to get through that I didn't enjoy.

[jamesmp98]

Atlanta?

[gargarplex → jamesmp98]

Atlanta has a good food, a tech community, affordable housing and office space

[jpster]

Dallas.

[bradknowles → jpster]

Dallas isn't any cheaper than Austin. If anything, it's more expensive.

[jpster → bradknowles]

What makes you say that? Rent is cheaper in Dallas.

https://smartasset.com/mortgage/the-true-cost-of-living-in-d...